Artists Put Santa Monicas on Canvas : Preservation: Some hope that capturing recreation area in paintings will draw attention to its importance.

Inspired by their predecessors whose paintings helped lead to the preservation of Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, local artists Thursday sat among the poppies and mustard plants of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, trying to capture its beauty on canvas.

“The artist has a role in this society to pick out things that are important and present them to the public,” said Moorpark painter Michele Weise, putting the finishing touches on a watercolor of a reed-rimmed lagoon in the foreground of the area’s brush-covered hills. “It’s the artist’s job to help people see what should be appreciated.”

Weise was one of 18 painters attending a “paint out” sponsored by the National Park Service, the Mountains Conservancy Fund and the Friends of Satwiwa to draw local artists out of their studios and into the wilderness.

Artists set up their easels in the hills of the Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa area of the Santa Monicas. The conservancy fund holds three to four such gatherings a year in the Los Angeles area.

Thursday’s painting festival was one day after a congressional panel approved a bill that could jeopardize the Santa Monicas’ status as a federally protected holding of the National Park Service.

“When we planned this event, it wasn’t our original focus to save the park because we didn’t know it was threatened,” Mountains Conservancy Fund spokeswoman Garrie Mar said. “But anything is possible amid budget cuts. Artists have been really influential in promoting people to act to preserve our natural resources.”

Mar, who doesn’t paint but said she would like to, compared the artists to painters in the Rocky Mountain School, who she said went before Congress in the mid-1800s with paintings of the landscape of Yellowstone and Yosemite, asking politicians to preserve the land.

The enchanting images of the areas’ great domes and waterfalls were instrumental in persuading lawmakers to set aside the land as national parks, Mar said.

“If we get more people exposed to these parks and their beauty, then we’ll instill a sense of stewardship,” Mar said. “And people won’t want to see them destroyed.” Pat Ryan of Malibu took her watercolor class to the event.

“People need to realize that we don’t have that much free country left to explore,” said Ryan, who encouraged her class to take advantage of the natural light.

“We need to document the area before development comes in or a disaster hits,” she said.

The group sat by a pond, painting a replica of an ap , a Chumash Indian dwelling made of willow poles and bark. The ap is part of the recreation area’s Native American Culture Center, which is set to open June 25. The center will honor the culture of the Chumash Indians, who were the indigenous inhabitants of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Officials hope to display some of the works painted Thursday inside the center’s main building.

Ryan already displays some of her paintings at a National Conservancy Fund gallery at Franklin Canyon in Los Angeles County.

“A lot of times people look at my paintings and say, ‘Where is that place and how do I get there?’ ” Ryan said. “That’s when I pull out a map and show them.”

Oxnard artist Jorgine Averett said Thursday was the first time she had painted outdoors or visited the area.

“I’d definitely return here,” she said. “It’s a wonderful chance to get out in nature.”

Mar said she hopes the paintings inspire more first-time visitors to the recreation area. She said public support is especially important as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on the bill that would require the National Park Service to put out an annual list of properties that ought to be eliminated from its jurisdiction.

“Through this art, we can expose people to the beauty of the mountains,” she said. “So many people live within an hour of these mountains and don’t even know they exist.”