Paul Balmer | Recent Paintings, Artist Opening

St. Helena, CA - Caldwell Snyder Gallery will host an opening reception for Paul Balmer with paintings from his most recent exhibition, on Saturday, August 4th, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at our St. Helena gallery, with wine generously provided by Castello di Amorosa. Exhibition continues through August 31st.

Paul Balmer continues his deep exploration of cityscapes while venturing into still-life and abstraction. He trains his eye on San Francisco as well as his longtime subject of New York, capturing iconic skyscrapers and their surrounding cast of supporting structures with improvisational line work, vivid and moody colors, and raw, beautiful surfaces. Nature and leisure often filter into his skylines, the water visible in the distance, full of floating-triangle sailboats: calmness and complexity interwoven.

Like Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard, two of his important influences, Balmer prioritizes color, light, and perspective. The style he has invented draws on influences ranging from tribal art to impressionism to expressionist masters like Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, pulling an essence of feeling from each tradition. “My paintings are not meant to be an exact depiction, but rather an ‘impression’ of a place,” he has said. “I hope the viewer can get a ‘feeling’ or a visceral sense…perhaps even a subconscious connection to that scene.”

Setting out from his South African origins, Balmer studied fine art in Sydney, Australia, and has described his 1999 move to New York as a turning point. He has received praise in Vanity Fair and ARTNews, among others; exhibited at galleries and art fairs in the U.S. and internationally; and placed his work in numerous private collections.

Caldwell Snyder is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international painters and sculptors of the 21st century. Caldwell Snyder has consistently been a vital force in the art world by introducing many renowned artists to the Bay Area for the first time. With a combined exhibition space of 12,000 square feet between the San Francisco and St. Helena gallery locations, Caldwell Snyder has mounted more than 500 exhibitions over the past three decades.