In short, Tomiko Bailey, Moss Beach resident since 1989, mother of two grown daughters and driven by her muse, is an emerging artist on the brink of recognition.
"It's finally coming together," she said. "I feel I've started a second life."
 Tomiko Bailey looks at her oil painting of Highway 92 that will be entered in an upcoming exhibit in Morro Bay. |
From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, July 14, and Sunday, July 15, in the courtyard of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History at 705 Front St., Santa Cruz, Bailey will join 35 artists showing work done in the "plein air" style.
The following weekend, Bailey will participate in the Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout in Alameda. A "paintout" is when artists create outside, in two hours limited by changes in sunlight, shadows and lighting, and put them up for exhibit and sale.
After that comes the Central Coast National Fine Art Competition presented by the Morro Bay Art Association. Bailey has two works in this one: one of a crab boat in Pillar Point Harbor, and the other a sweeping landscape looking east over Highway 92.
Both, at about 24-by-30-inches in size, are done in Bailey's emerging style which she describes as somewhere between impressionism and realism, in strong colors and generous dabs of thick paint.
In art terminology, Bailey prefers the "alla prima" technique: creating a painting in one sitting with thick coats of oil paint in a style favored by impressionists.
The muse behind Bailey is a blend of a lifelong love of art, classes, unflagging spousal support and her own perseverance.
"I'm happy with what I'm doing," Bailey said. "I want to be discovered by a couple of galleries so I don't have to worry about marketing and can just concentrate on painting."
That contentment was a long time coming. As a child in Japan, Bailey loved drawing and watercolor, and taught herself. In her mid-20s she relocated to San Francisco where she met her husband. The couple returned to Tokyo where Edward Bailey studied shiatsu. His wife studied Zen temple cuisine and macrobiotic cooking, which she taught in Tokyo and California.
Then came her daughters. "I've been a devoted mom, a stay-at-home mom, a chauffeur mom," she said. "I was happy I could do that."
While the girls were growing up, she'd taken an occasional art class, but when the urge to paint again grew strong 10 years ago, her husband took indecision out of her hands. He gave her a set of acrylic paints, an easel, bushes and canvas as a birthday present. "He's like that," she said gratefully. "He likes to support me."
She followed up his gift with classes at the College of San Mateo, but her husband urged her to follow her instincts instead. "That's not a bad idea -work by yourself," she mused. "Artists have to have their own style."
She studied a little more with plein-art teachers James Smyth and Brigitte Curt and joined the Peninsula Outdoor Painting Group, which meets weekly to go on outdoor painting jaunts and critique their own work. She began entering competitions - "I love to win," she said with a giggle - and showed work at Filoli Gardens and the Silicon Valley Open Studios event.
She knows the path to success is full of rejection and she's ready to deal with that. "You just get over it," she sighed, "and keep going."
So she pursues plein-air events and competitions. She admits she'd love to show her work on the coast, ideally at the Garden Gallery, and is aiming at the prestigious Sonoma and Carmel plein air events. "If you can get in those, you can be happy," she said.
She paints at home in a bright, airy studio with skylights and interior storage her husband built.
Her life is good now, but the muse still drives her. "I'm pretty happy with how I got to this point," she said. "You have to be a little bit crazy and a little bit fanatical about painting. If I didn't practice, I'd get nowhere. Forget cooking and cleaning. You have to paint, paint, paint to succeed."
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