Resident Painter to Capture Casa Gardens in Oil

After one week of prepping her canvases, Gianne Harper is ready to settle into the routine of painting for her exhibition at the Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens.

She has prepared six canvas surfaces to work with, first by tacking raw linen on wooden stretcher bars, coating the surface with three coats of rabbit skin glue and powdering the surface with marble dust to finish.

Who is this woman?

Harper is a contemporary plein-air realist artist based out of France who began her artist residency last week at Casa Romantica. She will paint the casa gardens from February through April, and her exhibition “In the Garden of the Casa” is set to open May 11. The show will continue through June 10.

Plein air refers to painting outdoors, in which the artist never takes a photograph or draws the subject before painting. Harper's artistic discipline dates back to France in the 1850’s. Realism is an artistic movement that is characterized by detailed and accurate representations of subject matter.

What makes Harper part of the contemporary arena of plein-air realist artists is that she works with large-format only, which many plein-air artists do not. She also crops images in her paintings as a photographer would.

“In a landscape, a photographer can’t photograph just one subject, everything in the picture plane goes into the photo," Harper said. "My painting is done in the exact same way.”

Harper was born and raised in California and has lived in Orange County for more than 10 years. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

She has lived in Paris, France for the past 24 years, though she plans to move back to California for awhile. The artist has presented a number of exhibitions in France, Italy and Sweden, her most recent project being at Domaine du Rayol in southern France, called “In the Garden of Eden.” Her medium is oil on canvas.

She credits Christoph Ganton from France as her master who taught her about the technical side of painting, and UC Irvine during the minimalist period as an influence for the conceptual part of her work.

The artist is interested in doing an exhibition in San Clemente because of the Mediterranean climate and the flora and fauna. Also, her last exhibition in Domaine du Rayol inspired her.

“I feel that water is the main concern for our future, and that water conservation can be achieved with water-resistant arid plants in our gardens," Harper said. "My visual message is to show the beauty of these plants and inspire gardeners to plant those water-wise plants in their own gardens."

In 2011, Harper had the opportunity to paint at the private chateau where Mary Cassatt, a leading American Impressionist painter, lived and worked from 1891 to 1893. This experience was the singular inspiration for her work. She calls it a solo experience and says that the garden was very run down but that she liked it because of the idea that she was painting everything around the weeds, using a technique called negative space.

“There were moments when I feel [Cassatt's] influence, those moments where I had gone to see it in many ways but a remnant memory of her. I could feel that her touch was still there,” the painter said.

Visit or contact Harper on her website. 

Casa Romantica is a nonprofit organization that provides educational and cultural opportunities for all ages and backgrounds. They present a spectrum of the performing, literary and visual arts.

Casa Romantica is open to the public Tuesday to Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Friday to Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Admission is $5 and children 12 and under get in free.