I'm absolutely delighted to share the stunning new website of my beloved friend, prolific multi media artist Gail Foulkes, who works her magic from an idyllic studio in a turn-of-the-century Red Barn on her family's rustic country property on the border of West Petaluma and Marin County in bucolic Chileno Valley.
Gail was born in Kenya and lived there until she was 12, when she went to high school in the UK. She remained in the UK until moving to Northern California with her husband, Michael and son Alex, 20 years ago. Our family's have been tight-knit since early on in the Foulkes' settling into our Sonoma County community.
Both Gail and Michael are thoroughly immersed in community life, especially within the arts and many of my readers know them well and consider them dear friends, neighbors, dedicated arts supporters.
And so it is super exciting to be able to share Gail's website Gailfoulkes.com with you all in its inaugural launch. Largely because this is the first time most people have had the opportunity to glimpse into Gail's rich body of work, of which there are some 600 plus pieces that she has produced over the past two decades alone.
"I started the site three or four years ago," says Gail. "Before COVID. A mentor at art school in the 80s said not to have a show until I had amassed a good body of work! Nearly four decades later, I finally feel confident in putting my work out there and not being too affected by what people say or think."
Early this year Gail pulled out all the stops to organize an extensive photoshoot of her diverse works in an outdoor studio on her property under the oaks. My youngest son, Dominic Rivetti was newly returned from a post-grad extended stay in Brooklyn and jumped into the project, working tirelessly with Gail out at Chileno Valley. They were lucky to have good weather to complete the shoot which was just the start of preparing the photographs Gail's art for online catalog.
Fine tuning takes time and the two of them have been keenly focused for the past few months. It's wonderful to see such an extensive body of work on one, easy to navigate site. Bravo Gail & Dom.
The pulling in during the pandemic made Gail look in rather than out. She describes how looking out: at her life in England, in Kenya, here, as somehow: "Too big," during that period. "It has brought me back to where I actually live, it is so important to be where you are," she says.
"I wanted to draw from the age of 12, but it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I finally went to art school and studied painting," says Gail. "Following art school, I branched out to learn about the third dimension through sculpture. And although I have always used the medium of photography for ideas and training my eye on composition, it is only recently that photography has become a medium that I use for more than just inspiration." Click here to see Gail's beautiful photography.
"These are drawings and paintings I made during COVID using the brown paper bags from supermarkets when we weren't able to reuse them for our shopping. They just piled up and this was my way of recycling them," explains Gail, who was offered a show at Redwood Cafe last summer. "That really propelled me forward — everything seemed to be going in the right direction," she adds.
The section of my work from the 80s shows where I've come from in my work," says Gail. "I still do the same subject matter."
Gail enjoys collaborating with fellow artists. Click here. This is very good for me as I am thrilled to be working with my dear friend on cover art for my upcoming novel, The House on Liberty Street. Gail has been sketching various Victorian properties around town these past few months. The idea is that she is recreating my fictional ideal of the house where most of the story takes place. Readers always want to know exactly where the ranch house in my first novel is located and I have to explain that it is an imagined home based on all of the energy of the many abandoned structures I've soaked in to my imagination in coastal Sonoma County and west Marin. The house in downtown Petaluma in this coming story is a similar amalgamation of heritage homes. I can't wait for us to complete the cover this summer and start showing it off prior to a fall release.
If you'd like to contact Gail for collaboration/shows or to see more of her work click here.
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