Once you get on a roll with a painting, its like you have free license to be part of the mountains. It’s an odd feeling.
Ken Jarvela is one of our favorite local artists. His work captures the wildest plants, rocks, sky and these are the subjects we love.
He grew up in Bayside, California alongside Humboldt Bay and, today, is one of the region’s premier landscape painters. His ability to capture light with vivid brushstrokes using subtle color palettes is, in our opinion, unparalleled. He loves the challenges of tough subjects including majestic redwoods, mountains with low winter sun, and wild rivers weaving through boulder fields.
We are nature’s chance to see itself.
His path to becoming a landscape painter is captured in a new podcast by the Dirtbag Diaries entitled Backcountry Brushes. Ken’s adventures into art started in 1985 with a winter in the Trinity Alps. Friends helped him pack in all his food, clothes, shelter, and art supplies. With paints at his side, over the next 55 days, Ken learned about survival, sounds, colors, and his relationship to place as he explored the wilderness alone.
My uncle, he’s a real character, he says: ‘Well Kenny, the only difference between you and the Donner Party is you won’t have anyone to eat!’
Ken did the cover for our 2022 release!
See more of Ken’s paintings at his Facebook page.
“Trinity Alps main inspiration for art and, well, mainly living” – awesome!!
I saw Mr Jarvel’s painting on Utube . It was called “ The California Nobody Knows”. I loved him , his painting were so beautiful and gave me such a sense of peace. I was born and raised in California . I called the Central Valley home. As a teenager and young adult Yosemite and the Gold Country were my stomping grounds. I’m 70 years old now and about a year ago I moved to the South back to my family roots. Anyway, as beautiful as it is here I’ll always be a California girl which is why Mr Jarvels’s painting are close to my heart. Rural California is beautiful and he’s captured this. I don’t know if I could afford one of his paintings but I would sure love to find out.