Visuals 06.04.20

Edi Matsumoto

Portrait and figure painter Edi Matsumoto earned her master’s degree in fine arts from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She’s created a body of work that focuses on diverse women – from the U.S., Japan, South Pacific, Indonesia – who are, in her words, “reminders of our inner goodness, beauty, strength, wisdom, and life force.” Her work has been shown from the Pacific Grove Art Center to the Triton Museum of Arts to the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. She had a local exhibition titled Goddesses and Warriors that was closed early due to shelter-in-place orders. But she’s selling face masks with images of her art, with all profits being donated to organizations combating Covid-19, including Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and Community Foundation for Monterey County. edimatsumoto.com.

Paul Seftel

British-born, world-traveled, and now Monterey Peninsula-based, Seftel uses different minerals and colors to make his own paints, which he applies to paintings about his new home of California. His large artworks look like abstracted topographical maps of the landscape. But they have deeper layers in which he explores bigger themes. Take his description accompanying “Humpty Dumpty,” the painting below: “This piece is about the atomic implosion of leadership, society and its systems as seen from the edge of the American West. The cracked surface is scattered, blown apart like the thin crust that is the shell of contemporary life and ego. This is the wake of the world, and the spread of particles from the blast zone are caught in stasis, as if sheltering in place.” Then he signs off, “all best wishes.” Very British. paulseftel.com.