Brian Stewart

The painter, who now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, has a 25-year history of participating in the Catalina Island plein air show that is widely recognized as the key event that marks the beginning of today’s plein air scene. “It was the start of the wet-painting shows,” says Stewart. “If you were lucky, you sold all your paintings and no one ever saw them again. I wanted to chronicle that scene for my grandkids, my family, and friends.” The result is An Artist’s Journey…Via Catalina, a 136-page hardbound book with 95 color plates, text that’s full of recollections from Stewart, and a forward by key plein air painting collector Roy C. Rose.

Stewart seems to feel that it is a small project intended for his circle of friends, but it’s clear when talking to him about it that the book is more than that. “I never intended it to grow into what it has,” says the artist. “It was just for friends and family. Once a year, I would disappear to the West Coast and do a show that they vaguely knew about, in Catalina. Really, it’s just kind of a memoir for me. I give the history of the Catalina shows, but mostly it highlights my own art and the work I did there. I feel like my pieces were kind of different.”