TOPICS / ART : A Glimpse of Artists’ Works : Tours: This year’s Circle Art Walk offers the public a chance to visit 21 peninsula studios.

When Los Angeles-based artist Daniel Pinkham moved to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the 1960s, he was already helping to re-establish the Californian plein-air, or open air, painting.

Now, 32 years later, Pinkham spends at least six months a year painting in locations throughout the world that let him take full advantage of the outdoor painting style popularized in mid-19th-Century Europe. Californian artists took up the movement in the early 20th Century, but the style fell out of favor in the 1930s, when painters stopped doing landscapes. In the 1960s Pinkham and other Californians took to the open air again to paint.

Pinkham says the garden setting of his studio on the peninsula gives him the serenity and inspiration he needs as an artist.

He and 20 other award-winning artists on the peninsula will open their homes and studios to the public Sunday for Circle Art Walk ’94.

The walk, which this year is actually a drive, is coordinated by the Palos Verdes Art Center to give art enthusiasts an unusual viewing opportunity.

“People can see . . . many talented and working artists in Palos Verdes and be exposed to all the different media they work in,” said Mary Lenihan, the art center’s executive director and an art historian.

“It’s always interesting to see artists working in their own environment. It gives you an added insight into their work.”

Lenihan said the featured artists work in many media, from painting and sculpture to basketry and wearable art.

The 20 other participants and their media are: Diana Brenna, fiber art; Dee Henning, communication between visual and verbal images; Pat Hinz, clay replicas of historic buildings; Anne Wittels, abstracts and photography; Eva and Paul Kolosvary, assemblage, collage and drawing; Janice Weissman, painting and sculpture; Julia Tam, Chinese brush painting; Florence Strauss, watercolor; Leonard Rubenstein, ceramic sculpture, wheel-thrown vessels; Sara Austin, mixed media, fiber, sculptural basketry; Diane Clapp Bartz, watercolor, mixed media; Jean Zaske, landscapes and interiors; Pat Cox, assemblages, titanium sculpture; Ruth and Gerhard Hanzlik, sculpture, watercolor, landscapes; Laura Hines-Jurgens, painting; Mia Botz Zapp, functional and fine art pieces; Judy Barnes Baker, wearable art, and Sherry Harris, baskets.

Visitors will see completed projects as well as those in progress and will have an opportunity to discuss them with artists from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Many pieces will be for sale.

In conjunction with the art walk, the art center will offer a special exhibition by artist/cartoonist Paul Conrad.

Art walk tickets at $15, available to anyone over the age of 14, are available at the center, 5504 W. Crestridge Road in Rancho Palos Verdes. Phone: (310) 541-2479.