CARPINTERIA : Painter Is Devoted to Agricultural Land

As she paints Ventura County agricultural scenes, capturing strawberry fields in soft pastels and old barns in muted browns, artist Barbara Dougherty goes for the heartstrings.

With every painting, she tries to tug people toward an appreciation of agriculture, to cajole them into sharing her love of the land. If enough suburbanites see her work, she figures, they might start to look differently at the land around them--and, perhaps, join the fight to save it from development.

“We’re living in an agricultural community, and yet we’re not noticing it,” said Dougherty, who lives in Carpinteria and paints fields throughout Ventura County. “It’s like a smell we’ve gotten used to.”

To help Dougherty spread her anti-pavement, pro-farm message, a Camarillo couple two years ago started a publishing company dedicated to producing note cards and recipe books decorated with her paintings. They also recently published a coffee-table book, “Harvest California,” with reproductions of Dougherty’s paintings and poems by her husband.

“Barbara paints things to remember, before they’re gone,” said Jack Rotenberg, who founded the publishing company with his wife, Marianne. “For those who grew up within eyeshot of ag land, (her pictures) give as good a feeling as a teddy bear.”

Ventura County lost nearly 1,500 acres of farmland between 1988 and 1990, the latest year for which statistics are available. Across the United States, up to 2 million acres of agricultural land vanish each year, as buildings sprout where crops once flourished.

Alarmed by the disappearance of the scenery she grew up with--and grew to love--Dougherty began painting farm scenes more than a decade ago. From pistachios to sunflowers, she’s captured almost all of California’s main crops. Now, she plans to head east and start painting soybean farms in Maryland.

But first, she wants to be sure that people in California get her message and start examining the remaining agricultural land around them with an eye toward preservation.

“We firmly believe that if people have a chance to look at these pictures, they will get hooked on the images,” said Marianne Moore-Rotenberg, who wrote dozens of recipes for six index card-size books graced with one of Dougherty’s paintings on the cover.

“I love the land and I know it’s vanishing,” Dougherty said. With the publishing company, she added, “it’s like we’re knocking on a door and saying, ‘Hey, agriculture is here.’ ”