Lowell Herrero

THE GREENWICH WORKSHOP PRESS

Seymour, Connecticut

NAPA VALLEY MUSUEM

Yountville, California

PLATE 16

Garvey Grape Harvest

1997, Acrylic on Canvas, 48” × 60”

Private Collection, St. Helena, CA

PLATE 3

Tuscan Landscape

1996, Acrylic on Canvas, 46” × 60”

Collection of Nancy and Michael Torres, CA

PLATE 1

Matisse

1995, Acrylic on Canvas, 60” × 46”

Private Collection, Los Angeles, CA

KATE ROTHROCK—What’s the earliest memory you have of

making art? And what images do you remember from

your childhood? Do you think you were born with a

given talent?

LOWELL HERRERO —Well, I started drawing when I was six

years old. I played with it and stayed at it because I loved

it. And I knew then, believe it or not, that I really wanted

to be an artist. I wanted to have my own comic strip, just

like the funny papers. My friend across the street was

involved in art. We talked about comic strips, and we both

worked together and we developed our own comic strips,

just for the fun of it. My strip was “Farmer Brown.” I was

doing farm scenes. I was just making it up— I knew beans

Interview

about farming. But that was exciting, to actually lay out

a story board with the copy and then with the balloon,

people talking, just like in the funny papers.

I was so taken by the comic strip characters at that

time that I wrote a stock letter and sent it to Walt Disney,

the creator of “Popeye,” E. C. Segar, and others. They all

answered. They said, “Just keep at it.” And then they sent

me copies of some of their strips that they had done. It was

all signed and dated. And oh my, that was a treasure!

I think my talent was God given. Art came naturally,

it really did. Some years later, I wanted to be an ani-

mator. I was into Disney’s Fantasia and the Three Little

Pigs and that material. It was very interesting and fasci-

nating and exciting. So I told people I wanted to go down

LH —I wanted to be a commercial artist. That was the

attraction for me, going to San Francisco, working for

agencies or a studio. And I geared myself for that. I took

a lot of design. They had excellent instructors at that

time. And I worked really hard, though it wasn’t hard

work for me because I enjoyed it so much. I learned so

much when I was at school. I learned color from

Alexander Nepote. The intensity of color, you can make

it vibrate, you can make it go forwards, backwards. I

studied with Wolfgang Lederer, who taught me design

work like I’d never been taught before. He was

Czechoslovakian and he was tough on his students, but I

understood what he was trying to get out of me and the

rest of the students, so I was able to win his respect early.

And I also did sculpture, silkscreen, oil painting, por-

traits, took anatomy.

KR —After CCAC, you began your career in commercial

art in San Francisco. Tell me the highlights of your

design and illustration career.

LH —I was a bullpen artist with Standford and Sanvick.

I started out doing small designs that would be part of an

advertisement. Then after a few years, I got a represen-

tative who showed my work to the potential buyers, and

the art directors started designing ads around my art-

work. Eventually, two friends and I decided to start our

own little design group in San Francisco. We called it

Butte, Herrero, and Hyde. That was March, 1953. We

were very successful. We stayed in business for thirteen

years, and we just devoted ourselves to it completely.

Then, unexpectedly, one partner, Bruce Butte,

decided to quit and be a painter. He was a very good

painter before he got into commercial art. I was leaning

toward fine art myself, because I was really involved

with Nate Oliveira at the time. He was encouraging me

to give it a try. I was still doing design work, but I was

losing interest in it after my first wife and I separated.

Then I met Janet in 1980. She was in advertising also. I

moved in with her, and then I told her that I was going

to give up commercial art and my income was just going

to Hollywood and work for Walt Disney. And they said,

“Well, it’s a lot of hard work and they don’t pay much.”

I was very disillusioned because of their comments on the

pay. I was thinking of money even then. I wanted to earn

a living and help my mother out. But also, I think even

then my heart was set on being an artist. I was saving my

money in my late teens because I wanted to go to an art

college. That was my goal, to build a foundation of art so

it could help me in the future. But while I was in high

school I took every art class I could find.

KR—What happened next?

LH —Pearl Harbor happened next. I was twenty-one.

They had the draft at that time, and when they attacked

Pearl Harbor, I was just ripe to be drafted. So to avoid

the Army a friend suggested I join him in enlisting in the

Coast Guard, which we did. I served in San Francisco, at

a Coast Guard receiving station. I was a seaman, first-

class. And when they found out I was an artist, they put

me on the base paper to do artwork. So for the next three

years and six months—that was the duration of the war

for me—I did nothing but draw. I just created things for

the little Barracks Watch paper.

Then after the war, I didn’t know what to do. I still

wanted to go to art school, but I didn’t have any money.

Then the GI Bill of Rights came on the scene. The gov-

ernment would subsidize any veteran at any school he

wanted to attend. And that was my savior right there. If

it weren’t for that, I’d never have made it to art school. I

went to the California College of Arts and Crafts in

Oakland. I think I had some of my happiest memories at

Arts and Crafts. I couldn’t get enough of it. I went to all

the summer sessions, so it amounted to about four years.

And I met a lot of interesting people, like Nathan

Oliveira, who’s been a lifelong friend.

KR—What was your focus at CCAC?

22 23

far left: Popeye, 1932, Pen and ink on paper, XX” x XX”

left: Benny Goodman, 1940, Graphite on illustrative board, , XX” x XX”

right: Otis Oldfield, CCAC instructor, 1947, Pastel on paper, 20” x 26”

far right: Alphabet series, 1956, Pen and ink on illustrative board, XX” x XX”

to think, ‘Well, I’ll take some of their thoughts and try to

distort like they do, but keep it under control.” I use both

things. I see both things. And that’s what happened, and

here it is: I’m working with this style now of distortion.

And apparently it’s accepted.

KR—Aside from the landscape of the Napa Valley, you’ve

also painted a lot of images of Italy and the South of

France. Will you talk about that?

LH —Oh, that’s been a big influence. That’s what started

the house. I love Italian farmhouses. I’ve seen so many of

them. And, of course, they’re all stone, very thick, and I

was painting Italian scenes of landscapes with Tuscan

houses, stone houses and that sort of thing. Janet and I

had never been to Italy. But after we got married, we took

our first trip to Italy, and we loved it. We’d go off the beat-

en path and look for places, little rundown stone houses.

After a couple of trips to Italy and a few paintings that

I’d done, I actually painted a farmhouse that I thought

I would like to build one day. We talked it over and we

agreed that this is what we wanted. We had no architect.

I designed it, laid it out. My contractor hired the right

people to come in and build it from my sketches. It’s very

simple. We used a double wall construction. That gave us

the depth so we could use concrete in the windowsills

and also little niches to put things in.

KR—So, do you feel that Napa Valley is now your home?

LH —Absolutely! We’ve planted our roots, both literally

and figuratively. We were born and raised in the city. I

never lived anywhere else but the cities of Oakland and

San Francisco. But the Napa Valley is so nice, it has a

quiet feeling up here. Agricultural. Everything starts

early in the morning, and ends early in the afternoon,

when the heat demands that you rest. I like that. It suits

the way I paint — high energy in the morning, and run-

ning on empty in the late afternoon.

to hit the bottom. I asked her, “Can you support me for

a year?” She said, “I can support you for about a year.

After that, you’re on your own.”

I’d been painting since Butte, Herrero, and Hyde

broke up. One day, an old acquaintance, Bill Dodge, who

had opened a gallery in Carmel, invited me to send him

some work. I sent him a painting I had done of the Brandt

Point Lighthouse in Nantucket and he hung it in his

gallery. About a year later, he called to say he had sold it.

I couldn’t believe it. I gave him more paintings. They

began to sell faster. They were seen by Carolyn Walsh of

the Sailor’s Valentine Gallery in Nantucket, and I started

sending paintings to her gallery as well.

KR—Were you happy with these new developments in

your career?

LH —Yes, it worked out very nicely, because I painted

East Coast subjects for Sailor’s Valentine Gallery and

West Coast images for Bill Dodge Gallery. When Janet

and I got married, we moved to San Francisco, to the

South Park area. We had a great time there, in an old

Victorian house that we remodeled to include our home

and my studio. We lived there for twenty years. We still

stay there when we’re in the city. We came up here to

Calistoga on weekly trips to Janet’s grandmother’s house.

I decided I wanted to paint here, and we found some

acreage up on Mount St. Helena. I built a huge studio, all

glass. In that space, I was able to flex my muscles and

really paint big. And I started painting the things that I

saw around me up there. Janet showed some of my work

to the I. Wolk Gallery in St. Helena. Ira gave me a one-

man show, and it sold out.

I’m positive it had a lot to do with the subject mat-

ter, but also the fact that I exaggerated everything.

Everything is deliberately distorted. I did that with my

landscapes. I flattened everything out. I distorted up to a

point. But I could control it; whereas it wasn’t like the

true, primitive artists, the unschooled artists. I was very

influenced by them to begin with, and that’s what led me

24 25

far left: Kansas Landscape, 1976, Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 18”

left: Orcas, 1978, Acrylic on canvas, 16” x 16” right: Cranberry Harvest, 1984, Acrylic on canvas, 26” x 20”

For every painting I do, I try to add something a lit-

tle different to it, just keep moving on. I’m just on my

own path. And it’s nothing like, I’ll have to say, my good

friend Oliveira would do. He kids me about painting

these big, oversize women. We kid each other back and

forth, and that doesn’t bother me.

KR—My last question is about your relationship to your

work. Would you share any thoughts you have about that?

LH —Well, I love to do it. I love art. I’ll never retire. When

I go, I want to be at the easel, painting! I feel like the

happiest fellow in the whole Napa Valley.

When I start a painting, I have sort of a game plan.

I create these little comprehensives. I project those up on

the canvas, and I outline the whole thing in black paint.

When you get it up that big on the canvas, it takes on a

different perspective, and I often change the layout or

the color. But the actual drawing is all done beforehand.

On average, I’d say I have three going at a time.

That’s the exciting part of it, starting a new, fresh

canvas—a big white area, filling it up—and then putting

that aside and starting another one. Then I go back to

the first one and it looks fresh to me. I like to keep a feel-

ing of freshness all the way through.

And then I like to have Janet look at my work in

progress. She’s been my rock, my honest critic. She

knows I want her to be honest. Don’t flatter me. Just tell

me if you like it or you don’t. She will. She doesn’t hold

back. She comes in with a fresh eye, and I usually say,

“She’s right. Why did I do that?”

KR—In your most recent paintings, it seems as if you’re

exploring new territory, taking some of the techniques

you’ve used in the past and using them to make riskier

kinds of paintings.

LH —When I started painting, I was trying to break that

slick, hard commercial look, break away from that by

actually painting with big blobs or dots. I looked at

Georges Seurat’s work. It’s totally different from the way

I use it, but that’s what started it all. And now, lately, I’ve

been having fun with it, just loosening it up a little. And

I’m also using more offbeat colors, playing around with

textures, like in my painting of smudge pots. That paint-

ing triggered off some other ideas I wanted to pursue of

the smudge pots. They keep going through my head now

because I like what happened there.

26 27

left: Judy and Marge, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 24” X 30”

9

Foreword

ntering the Herreros’ Calistoga estate through the

rusted gate and past a shimmering olive grove that fronts

the Tuscan-style house and studio, one is led directly into

the enchanted world where Lowell Herrero makes his

home and conjures up his sentimental landscapes. The

Napa Valley, an envied bucolic setting, has been Herrero’s

home for more than a decade. As co-inhab tants of this

region, we witness with Lowell the colorful growth of the

vineyards, the brilliant yellow of the spring mustard, the

bright greens of the vines’ new leaves and the ripening of

the grapes’ color. As we watch the rhythm of harvest with

admiration, we are fortunate to have Herrero’s artistic eye

alongside us delving into deeper points of observation.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome this excep-

tional artist to the galleries of the Napa Valley Museum

for a retrospective exhibition of his work produced from

1995 to the present. The museum’s mission, focusing on

the art, history, and heritage of the Napa Valley, is

brought to life through Lowell Herrero’s work. His sunny

canvases depicting field laborers and families amidst

vineyards, fields of flowers, and groves of olives have

become windows onto the landscape and agricultural

work outside his studio. Born and bred a Californian and

a longtime resident of Napa Valley, Herrero is not only a

local treasure but a nationally known artist whose work

has charmed the senses of viewers and collectors alike.

E

Contents

6 Foreword by Jennifer Garden

8 Joy in the Landscape by Kate Rothrock

24 Interview Lowell Herrero with Kate Rothrock

42 Plates

168 Chronology

221 Acknowledgements