02 May Artist Spotlights: Whitney Brooks Abbott

Whitney Brooks Abbott celebrates quotidian moments of life along California’s Central Coast. From cloud-swept beaches to rural landscapes, abandoned greenhouses to the tranquil interior of her home south of Santa Barbara, her quietly expressive oil paintings are informed not only by devoted academic study but also through the role her family has played in the state’s heritage of both art and agriculture.

Five generations ago, Abbott’s paternal ancestors moved West to farm on the fertile Rancho Cañada de Salsipuedes, now part of the Santa Ynez Valley wine country. Her maternal grandfather arrived to raise sheep on San Miguel, one of the nearby Channel Islands. His four daughters all pursued art careers: the late Hope Meryman, a woodcut artist married to Andrew Wyeth’s biographer; Whitney Brooks Hanson, who creates monoprints and oils on paper; Arizona-based watercolorist Palmer Butler; and Whitney’s mother, Meredith Brooks Abbott, a revered California Impressionist and founding member of the now almost four-decades-old Oak Group, artists dedicated to preserving the state’s endangered landscapes.

It’s no surprise, then, that Whitney herself grew up “always wanting to be an artist.” Without pressure or expectations, her mother facilitated that path. “She was so respectful of my and my twin younger brothers’ creativity. From an early age, we all had sketchbooks, and she left us wonderful art supplies on the kitchen table.” Whitney progressed from drawing “young kid stuff like Pegasus and unicorns” to, as a teenager, “reimagining album covers for Led Zeppelin and the Eagles.” She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of California Santa Cruz, focusing on printmaking while always painting; and in 1993, between her junior and senior years, she studied on a fellowship at the Yale School of Art in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Summer Read | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18 inches | 2023

Returning to Carpinteria after college, Whitney taught art in schools and did some illustration work while gradually building a portfolio. She found representation with the Easton Gallery in Montecito. Following that gallery’s closing, she eventually moved to the Sullivan Goss Gallery in downtown Santa Barbara’s historic arts district, where her latest, highly successful solo show concluded in March.

Sunrise Through Greenhouses | Oil on Panel | 30 x 50 inches | 2023

That exhibition presented an artist in the prime of her career. She paints in and around her home studio in Carpinteria, where she, her husband, their two teenage daughters, and their 9-year-old son live in a house bought in the 1930s by her grandfather, Tirey Abbott, on a 10-acre farm where they tend the Hass avocado trees he planted. Nearby groves, fields, and farm structures, along with beaches and coastal mountains, provide ample subject matter for paintings that offer viewers a multitude of qualities to savor. Her balanced yet dynamic compositions feature vibrant color choices and detailed, energetic brushwork that draws discerning eyes ever closer. “Some artists put paint down on their canvas and then scumble it around to mix it,” she says. “I prefer to mix my paint first, then make a brushstroke and just let it stay there.”

Brooks Abbott’s work is represented by Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara, California.