Artist wins on both coasts

NEWPORT BEACH — It was a great night in town for Greg LaRock — even if he wasn’t there to appreciate it.

The Newport Beach resident won the Peter & Mary Muth Interpretive Center’s mural competition late Friday night, as his painting “Shadowed Bluffs” beat out 38 other submissions for the design of the upcoming mural by the center’s entrance. LaRock, though, couldn’t be at home to celebrate; he was in Easton, Md., where he took first and second place in another competition.

“Two in one night. That’s kind of crazy,” LaRock said by phone. “It’s funny. These competitions are strange. Sometimes you think your paintings are really strong and that you did really well, and you get overlooked, and sometimes you think you should have turned in something else, and then your painting pops up.”

While the artist stayed on the other side of the country, his work hung on the wall of the Muth Interpretive Center Saturday morning during the Southern California Plein Air Painters Assn.’s annual art show and sale. Fifty-eight artists from the association displayed their works at the ecology-themed educational center by the Back Bay. The show is scheduled to continue today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the center at 2301 University Drive in Newport Beach.

The show, which the association has hosted for five years, served as a fundraiser for both the association and Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends, which reaped 30% of the proceeds from sales.

Roger Mallett, the executive director of the Naturalists, said he had run out of wall space at home from buying paintings at previous shows, but noted the artwork served a purpose other than just moneymaking.

“Looking at the pictures, I sometimes see things I didn’t see before,” he said. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s a neat vista,’ and then I’ll go check it out.”

In the past, the association held the show in September but moved it to July this year — which meant many of the paintings captured the bay in spring or summer mode.

Davy Liu, who won the show’s jury prize for his painting “Bay View,” made an early-morning drive to capture the light on a bluff overlooking the water.

“I came here about 5:30 in the morning in May,” said Liu, a Laguna Niguel resident who runs the Davy Liu Studio Gallery in Laguna Beach.

LaRock has a gallery show coming later this week. He will be featured along with three others in a show at the Rainey Fine Art Gallery at 515 E. Balboa Blvd. in Newport Beach; the opening reception is from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday.

Early next year, the Muth center plans to start painting a mural by its front entrance based on LaRock’s design.

For more photos, click here.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].