California Modernist - Channing Peake

Many of California's great artists came through Santa Barbara at one point or another. As an art appraiser, I get to see many of theses paintings in local collections. Santa Barbara served as an artist colony of the Eucalyptus School and later appealed to many California modernists. Inspired by Santa Barbara's landscape, architecture, and history -- artists flocked to the small Central Coast community. One of the town's important artists, albeit lesser known, was Channing Peake who was a muralist, painter, and draftsman.

Channing Peake "Man on a Horse" (Askart.com)

Channing Peake (1910 – 1989) was born in Marshall, Colorado but as a young boy he and his family moved to northern California. After completing high school, Peake began attending art school at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. For two years he studied at the Santa Barbara School of Art and then traveled to New York at the Art Students League under Rico Lebrun, a colleague he would come to work with for many years. He also befriended the great Diego Rivera and traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, and Europe with the famous muralist. Under the WPA Federal Art Project, he became a muralist and in 1928 helped paint murals in Santa Barbara's El Paseo Restaurant, along with fellow artists Edward Borein, Joe DeYoung, and Will James.

Peake ultimately settled in Santa Barbara where he became a founding member of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He collaborated with artist, Howard Warshaw on the Don Quixote mural at Santa Barbara City Library. In 1984 Peake completed a mural which is planned to be on display in 2011 at the Santa Barbara Airport's new terminal.

His work has been exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Carnegie Institute, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the M. De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Pasadena Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon, the San Diego Museum of Art, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Seattle Museum of Art.

For further reading, check out a recent article in Santa Barbara Magazine.