Artist's eye sees our city in softer light

By Michael Fitzgerald Record Columnist

October 26, 2012 12:00 AM

"I love our neighbors," she added, though. "The ones that actually live here and own the property." Hadady loves Stockton as a subject of her art as well. A 50-something plein air painter, she sets up her easel on Stockton streets and Delta sloughs. Her work and her perspective on the city presumably are the reasons the Stockton is Magnificent Committee named Hadady the Official Artist of Residence for 2012. You're likely to see her working in unexpected places. She did a fine art oil, for instance, of the vacant San Francisco Floral building on the Miracle Mile stretch of Pacific Avenue. "When I looked up and down the street," she explained, "I loved the red color of the building and the way it curved and the way light was glowing on the building." Stocktonians take it for granted, but in addition to Mediterranean climate, this region enjoys Mediterranean light. A sort of light that has inspired painters for centuries. "I tell everyone, the light that I see in the Renaissance paintings is what I love about Stockton. To me, it's like a 17th-century Dutch port."

Stockton artist Vanessa Hadady lists her home/gallery

on Church Street, a half-block from Gleason Park in a neighborhood rife with drug trafficking and vagrants. Location, location, location. Potential buyers "hang up the phone when they find out where we are," she laughed. "Without any more comments. Like someone scissored the line." Hadady didn't know Stockton's neighborhoods when, leaving Reno, she bid on a Church Street home three years ago. She just wanted a Victorian.

Meinndert Hobbena, The Avenue at Middelharris, 1871, National Gallery (London)

Stockton has other artistic and geographic similarities with Holland, confirmed Merrill Schleier, a professor of art at University of the Pacific.
Port of Stockton, acrylic/canvas, 51 x 41 cm by V. Hadady, BFA, MA

Which she got. She also got scavengers pushing shopping carts, filchers, pushers and guys who argue angrily with adversaries on a parallel planet.

"When I taught 17th-century art, I used to equate the flatness of the Central Valley landscape to the flatness of the Dutch landscape," Schleier said.

In both places, artists look upward for beauty in the magnificent, glowing towers of cloud. Enter "Meinndert Hobbema" in Google Images, and you'll see. Hadady also embraces Stockton's industrial side. On Wednesday, she painted the Port of Stockton. Her vantage was a spot on the Hotel Stockton's fifth floor. "I love the smell of the water, the fish and the reek of the muck," she said. "Here you have these channels of moving water. It's alive." In her painting, Hadady says, the water is "realism emerging from abstract and abstract emerging from nature." Being outdoors, Hadady constantly meets the public. People stop. They watch. They pepper her with questions. She even takes the occasional request. When she was painting Janet Leigh Plaza, several fascinated young boys asked if she would include them, too. Hadady painted them into her painting "Summertime."

Like most of her canvases, the painting features a cheerful color palette, post-impressionist brush strokes and curvilinear liberties with straight lines. "I think I intuitively warp the plane a little bit," Hadady explained. "I think it pulls you into the plane. I also like to leave in every painting an open space so the eye can rest." Hadady got the painting bug from her family, a Hungarian offshoot of the Hapsburgs steeped in Europe's fine art tradition. She took private lessons, later earning a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of New Mexico. Hadady describes herself as "a portly, fat painter" and is equally modest about her art. "I've been told that I don't have my own style ... by an art authority." But she's obviously passionate about painting, and about painting Stockton, from city streetscapes to watery environs. "I feel like I'm in an American town from the turn of the century," Hadady said. "It's a nice pace. It's like a baseball game." See Hadady's art at gallerypreviewonline.com. Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/fitzgeraldblog. Photo: Stocktons downtown waterfront and port as seen through the eye of plein air painter Vanessa Hadady. Says Hadady: The light that I see in the Renaissance paintings is what I love about Stockton. To me, its like a 17th-century Dutch port.

Summertime, acrylic/canvas, 65 x 57 cm by V.Hadady, BFA, MA