Farewell to Fillmore & Pine

Dear Friends,

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, we have decided to declare victory and close our gallery at Fillmore & Pine Streets in San Francisco at the end of February.

What began as a six-week exercise in following your bliss has led to the creation of a wonderful community of artists and collectors over two decades. Among the opportunities for which we’re most grateful:

• Presenting the first gallery exhibitions of a long list of talented artists, including Ken Auster, Francis Livingston, Michael Reardon and Veerakeat Tongpaiboon.

• Working with key figures from the Bay Area Figurative Movement now departed, including Theophilus Brown, Paul Wonner and Henry Villierme, who had a late-in-life resurrection of the art career he put aside 40 years earlier.

• Learning from wise gallery veterans like Charles Campbell, Jan Holloway, Claire Carlevaro, Barbara Janeff and the ever-helpful Mark Hoffman at Maxwell Galleries — and especially for the tutelage and friendship and good ideas of art historian William Whitney.

We are eternally thankful for your encouragement and appreciation and support — and for the friendships we have made during your visits to the gallery. Many, many of you have acquired terrific paintings you love, and we have watched together as a group of extremely talented artists have pursued their passions and established considerable success.

The TRG website and Art Matters, our online magazine, will continue. We look forward to keeping in touch with you through periodic emailings and posts on our Facebook page.

New adventures await! In addition to ongoing legal and publishing ventures, I am looking forward to pursuing interests and opportunities still to be discovered. To that end, I welcome your suggestions and introductions.

Thank you for 20 great years. Onward to the next 20!

With thanks and all good wishes,
THOMAS R. REYNOLDS

Lessons in stained glass

Putting finishing touches on the Swedenborgian Church’s St. Christopher window

FIRST PERSON | DOUGLAS G. STINSON

Like many people, I had been active in church life from childhood into early adolescence. Then, confronting what my teenaged mind saw as cowardice and hypocrisy within my church, I swore off religion.

In college I became aware of the writings of the 18th century scientist and Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg and, as a scientist, was drawn to his insistence that the teachings of faith and reason must conform. But I had no interest in being part of any organized religion.

Until I walked into the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church.

I was awestruck by the building’s humble strength and simple beauty. Everything breathed a spiritual essence. I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

By 2012, the condition of the stained glass windows that had graced the Swedenborgian church at the corner of Lyon and Washington Streets for more than 100 years had deteriorated. We learned that if action were not taken, the beautiful windows — an integral part of the National Historic Landmark — could be lost forever.

A message from Barcelona

A painting of Fillmore and Clay Streets in San Francisco by Joan Longas

Dear Thomas Reynolds,

I had the pleasure of meeting you in your gallery this past summer. From that visit to San Francisco was born this painting that I just sold to a customer who, although he is from Barcelona like me, I met through your gallery website.

Joan Longas

EARLIER: Our artistic corner

Painting the energy of the streets

Veerakeat in his home studio | Photograph by Jennifer Blot

By JENNIFER BLOT

The destiny of artist Veerakeat Tongpaiboon had a lot to do with the windows of Academy of Art University’s Sutter Street gallery in downtown San Francisco.

Though he’s now a nationally recognized cityscape painter, the first time he walked by the gallery nearly 25 years ago, he was a waiter and recent emigrant from Thailand. Captivated by the painting of a nude in the window, he set about learning more about the artist, Craig Nelson. When he found out Nelson was director of painting in the School of Fine Art, he decided to enroll at the Academy.

Fast forward a couple of years to an evening when Thomas R. Reynolds, the editor and publisher of a San Francisco legal newspaper, passed by the windows and felt a similar connection to a painting he saw. He entered the gallery, inquired about purchasing two of the works on display and left a business card for the artist, an Academy M.F.A. student who went by one name: “Veerakeat.”

These serendipitous moments happened more than two decades ago, but Veerakeat’s relationship with both Nelson and Reynolds endures — as has his popularity as a San Francisco cityscape artist.

An honest opinion

My pal Judson Orrick, a lawyer, was moved to begin painting. One day his friend the artist Joe McFadden came by his law office. As Judson tells the story:

“I represented Joe in a dispute with a gallery owner who wasn’t paying him. Joe came by my office, which is festooned with examples from my abstract expressionist period. Big canvasses. Lots of bright squiggles and whathaveyou’s. Everyone who comes in compliments my rare talent. Joe said nothing. So I said to him: Everyone compliments my artwork, Joe, but yours is the single opinion that matters to me. Honestly, what do you think?”

“It’s dreadful,” he said. “Truly horrible. A waste of paint and canvas. I know orangutans working with dung who have shown more promise. Seriously, it’s bad. You should stop.”

Then he turned up his palms, cocked his head, smiled and shrugged. “You asked.”

Read more: “I really, really liked that guy”

One that got away

Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for 830 El Camino del Mar in San Francisco.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT designed no homes built in San Francisco — only the V.C. Morris Gift Shop on Maiden Lane, thought by some to be a warm-up for his circular design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

It turns out, however, that Wright also designed a home for the Morrises in Sea Cliff, overlooking the Golden Gate. It was never built. But drawings show what might have been.

Read more: “A Frank Lloyd Wright house in Sea Cliff“

Capturing an essence

A HIGH SCHOOL art class stopped by to visit Sandy Ostrau’s exhibition. They had a few questions.