Arturo Tello
I see the role of the artist not as a dreamer, but as an advocate and activist. I believe that just as the farmer provides sustenance for the body, the landscape painter gathers food for the soul. When I first became a plein-air painter forty years ago, I began a passionate, almost mystical, love affair with the land, particularly the Carpinteria Bluffs and the other Santa Barbara coastal open spaces that were being threatened by development.
Painting landscapes that might soon disappear added a poignant urgency to the activity. Now after some of our “Endangered Landscapes” have been saved for perpetuity, I feel another kind of poignancy when I paint them—an ineffable sense of gratitude for the individuals and organizations that made possible this legacy of natural beauty for future generations.