From the collection of:
Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University || VAM Home

In Bay Bridge Series #687, Otis Oldfield presents a rather cold and industrialized scene. Shading techniques such as hatching and crosshatching have been used to create a sense of shadow in the composition, which makes the weather seem dreary and cold. Consisting mainly of dirt and rocks and lacking a great deal of grass, the area under the bridge appears quite unwelcoming.

About the Artist

Born in Sacramento, California, in 1890, Otis Oldfield left school at the age of 16 to apprentice at a local print shop. Several states and many odd jobs later, he enrolled in Arthur Best’s San Francisco art school in 1909. He sailed for Paris in 1911, where he studied at the Academie Julian until 1913. Oldfield worked in Paris as a successful artist until returning to the United States in 1924, when he began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts.

In 1925, Oldfield won the San Francisco Art Association’s Gold Medal for Graphic Arts. From that time forward, his work was featured in numerous acclaimed exhibitions. He also received the SFAA’s Parilia Prize and the Governor Olsen Medal in 1939.

Oldfield taught painting and drawing at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco) from 1946 until his retirement in 1952. He continued painting until his death in 1969.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: What time of day do you think is being portrayed here? Does this drawing convey a mood? If so, what elements of art help convey that mood? How does the artist use one-point perspective to give the composition depth? What does the use of shading techniques add to the drawing?

Activities: Practice hatching, crosshatching, and other forms of shading and use them in a drawing.

When looking at a cityscape, a stretch of highway, or a railroad, you may have noticed that all the visible lines converge at a single point on the horizon. In Bay Bridge Series #687, all of the angled lines meet up at one point. This is called one-point perspective. With a pencil and a straight edge, create your own composition using one-point perspective.

Links

See numerous works by Oldfield at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
[search.famsf.org:8080/search.shtml?keywords=Otis%20Oldfield]

More information about Oldfield and images of his works can also be found at AV Fine Arts and the Bingham Gallery.
[www.geocities.com/the_vaughn_family/index2.html]
[www.binggallery.com/oldfieldpage.html]

Learn about California Regionalism at the George Krevsky Gallery site.
[www.georgekrevskygallery.com/exhibitions/calreg/]

Learn about lithography and other forms of printmaking, step by step, at the Museum of Modern Art’s What Is a Print? site.
[www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/whatisaprint/print.html]