WELCOME TO ASMA WEST
THE MARINE ARTIST
..........“The task [of an artist] is to transform a blank surface or unformed hunk of material into something that has structure, meaning and beauty. All the decisions he makes are his own, and the wrong one can result in the loss of hours, weeks or months of work. The artist does this without a regular salary, paid sick days, vacations, promotions, pension plans or guarantees of any sort …
“Those artists who have decided to dedicate themselves to marine art face an additional set of difficulties, presented by a discipline that demands absolute truth in the telling of the story of man’s relationship to the sea. The exacting requirements – to convincingly render the complex curves and structural intricacies of specially engineered man-made objects traveling on a mutable liquid, subject to the subtlest effects of light and wind – is enough to deter most artists. Add in the challenge of conveying the narrative and emotional components of each particular situation, and the task becomes as formidable as any in all of art.”
J. Russell Jinishian
Bound for Blue Water
The Greenwich Workshop Press, 2003
The American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) was founded in 1978 by a small group of artists who shared a love for all things maritime. Through the years, ASMA has grown to a society of hundreds of members from all over the country – artists and non-artists – dedicated to the advancement and appreciation of marine art. ASMA is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in marine art through national and regional juried exhibitions of members’ work, annual meetings, quarterly newsletters and the promotion of marine art through workshops, outdoor painting sessions and activities involving high school and college art departments.
ASMA-West is one of five regional divisions of ASMA, and it represents ASMA members in fourteen western states plus Hawaii and Alaska. The region has two elected representatives who act as a conduit between western US members and the Society as a whole. In addition there is a five-member ASMA-West Executive Committee, who together with the regional reps act as a team to generate marine art events, exhibitions, paint outs, conferences, lectures and school activities in the various western sub-regions – southern California, northern California, Oregon, Washington and the Mountain States. This web site is designed to facilitate two-way communication between the ASMA-West team and the membership, to inform members of upcoming shows, workshops and other events that might be of interest to them, and to encourage both their input and participation in as many ways as they are able. |
