‘Farms and Fields’ Pleasantly Familiar

Without apology, watercolorist Barbara Newman stays close to home with her show at Santa Paula’s Live Oak Gallery. Newman’s exhibition, “Farms and Fields of Ventura County,” serves up visual pleasantries and a reassuring familiarity, right down to such local sights as a Piru gas pump and the Union Oil Museum--within a stone’s throw of this gallery.

Viewing the show, a warm sense of place is unavoidable. These scenes can be found just down the block or down the road. As a subtext, Newman’s affectionate view of agrarian life helps reaffirm Ventura County’s ongoing connection to the land as a food source, a last bastion of agricultural might in Southern California.

Newman is interested in farming and those who work the farms--the unheralded farm worker population. She treats these scenes with a nice, loose hand, often emphasizing the dappled effect of light and shadow and taking advantage of the fluidity of her medium.

At times, Newman nestles up close to her subjects. She pushes almost to the point of abstraction--but affably--in “Cactus on a Wire,” and places the focus on a swath of sunlight against a barn wall in “Sunflowers.”

In the main, though, Newman keeps a humble presence, leaning toward a reportorial stance rather than wielding a self-conscious artistic license. She sticks close to the source in this group of images, in which Ventura County is the terrain and the message.

Barbara Newman, “Farms and Fields of Ventura County,” through May 1 at Live Oak Gallery, 118 S. 8th St. in Santa Paula; 525-6114.