John Comer
Through NOV 3, 2021
Opening Saturday June 5th 6-8pm
The Santa Barbara
CHANNEL COLLECTION
From the maritime museum
"Heritage, Craft & Evolution
surf board exhibition"
4 Surfboards shaped by Renny Yater with paintings by John Comer and 2 historic paintings of iconic california surfing locations
These rare collector items will be now available for purchase at Santa Barbara Fine Art
Santa Barbara has always played an understated but influential role in the international surf scene. Legendary surf spots, such as Rincon, El Capitan, Refugio and Point Conception, and local legends Renny Yater, George Greenough and John Bradbury have also helped put Santa Barbara on the surfing map.
Renny Yater was one of the first commercial surfboard builders of the 1950s – a generation that really put surfing on the map. As the sport of surfing has continued to grow and flourish throughout the years, so too has Yater’s reputation as a leading contributor to the surfing industry. Perhaps even more remarkable than Yater’s early accomplishments has been his ability to change with the industry, staying on top of current trends and materials and continuing to produce innovative new boards.
In the early 1950s, Yater shaped and fiberglassed his own boards. During the mid-5Os, Hobie hired him to glass his balsa boards in his Dana Point shop. In 1957, he moved over to Dale Velzy’s shop in San Clemente where he began to shape balsa boards. In the fall of 1959, Renny opened Yater Surfboards in Santa Barbara and at age 88 can still be found in the shaping room every day turning out classic Yater boards.
John Comer’s professional painting career began in 1968 with his first solo gallery exhibition in Santa Barbara and has been intermingled with surfing and sailing voyages to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Pacific Islands and Africa. As a sailor he came to appreciate the importance of the atmosphere in a painting. “The weather is the important thing... it affects what you see and don’t see – colors and shapes.”
In the tradition of plein-aire painters who celebrated early California, his work is distinguished by a level of craft rarely seen in contemporary painting. Comer’s landscapes are both skillful renditions of familiar and unfamiliar scenes, and subtle meditations on time, space, and light. In recent years he has painted primarily in California and Baja California Sur creating work that reflects his enduring realtionship to the land and sea.
