SATICOY : Ranch Is Setting for Works of Art, Charity

About two dozen Ventura County residents gathered in the garden of a Saticoy ranch Saturday to display their work as part of a benefit for St. John’s Regional Medical Center Foundation.

The event, which included a drawing for trips to Palm Springs and a Harry Connick Jr. concert, attracted about 150 people, said Nancy Gill, the fund development director for the foundation. Gill said they hoped to raise about $10,000 for patient care at St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo and St. John’s Medical Center in Oxnard.

Each artist donated 25% of the proceeds of pieces they sold at the one-day event, Gill said.

Santa Paula artist Noble Powell III, whose father is a doctor at the Pleasant Valley hospital, said he was eager to help out.

“I have a great attachment to St. John’s,” Noble said. “We were really raised at the old hospital. I remember running up and down the halls as a kid when I visited my dad there. It’s nice to give something back to them.”

A longtime abstract expressionist painter, Noble has in recent years made a living doing landscapes of famous golf course greens. His father liked the pictures of places where he had played, like the painting of the wind-swept oceanside green titled “18th Hole at Pebble Beach.”

Most of the artists took the opportunity to wander the 100-year-old ranch estate, surrounded by fragrant strawberry fields and owned by James and Cynthia Lloyd-Butler.

Oxnard still-life artist Glenna Kurz, who propped her oil paintings of brilliantly colored flowers under towering palms and magnolia trees, said the setting was perfect for her work.

“It’s a wonderful place to display your work,” she said. “I’ve talked to a few of the other artists and we plan on doing paintings of the estate.”