Lowell Herrero
THE GREENWICH WORKSHOP PRESS
Seymour, Connecticut
NAPA VALLEY MUSUEM
Yountville, California
PLATE 16
Garvey Grape Harvest
1997, Acrylic on Canvas, 48” × 60”
Private Collection, St. Helena, CA
PLATE 3
Tuscan Landscape
1996, Acrylic on Canvas, 46” × 60”
Collection of Nancy and Michael Torres, CA
PLATE 1
Matisse
1995, Acrylic on Canvas, 60” × 46”
Private Collection, Los Angeles, CA
KATE ROTHROCK—What’s the earliest memory you have of
making art? And what images do you remember from
your childhood? Do you think you were born with a
given talent?
LOWELL HERRERO —Well, I started drawing when I was six
years old. I played with it and stayed at it because I loved
it. And I knew then, believe it or not, that I really wanted
to be an artist. I wanted to have my own comic strip, just
like the funny papers. My friend across the street was
involved in art. We talked about comic strips, and we both
worked together and we developed our own comic strips,
just for the fun of it. My strip was “Farmer Brown.” I was
doing farm scenes. I was just making it up— I knew beans
Interview
about farming. But that was exciting, to actually lay out
a story board with the copy and then with the balloon,
people talking, just like in the funny papers.
I was so taken by the comic strip characters at that
time that I wrote a stock letter and sent it to Walt Disney,
the creator of “Popeye,” E. C. Segar, and others. They all
answered. They said, “Just keep at it.” And then they sent
me copies of some of their strips that they had done. It was
all signed and dated. And oh my, that was a treasure!
I think my talent was God given. Art came naturally,
it really did. Some years later, I wanted to be an ani-
mator. I was into Disney’s Fantasia and the Three Little
Pigs and that material. It was very interesting and fasci-
nating and exciting. So I told people I wanted to go down
LH —I wanted to be a commercial artist. That was the
attraction for me, going to San Francisco, working for
agencies or a studio. And I geared myself for that. I took
a lot of design. They had excellent instructors at that
time. And I worked really hard, though it wasn’t hard
work for me because I enjoyed it so much. I learned so
much when I was at school. I learned color from
Alexander Nepote. The intensity of color, you can make
it vibrate, you can make it go forwards, backwards. I
studied with Wolfgang Lederer, who taught me design
work like I’d never been taught before. He was
Czechoslovakian and he was tough on his students, but I
understood what he was trying to get out of me and the
rest of the students, so I was able to win his respect early.
And I also did sculpture, silkscreen, oil painting, por-
traits, took anatomy.
KR —After CCAC, you began your career in commercial
art in San Francisco. Tell me the highlights of your
design and illustration career.
LH —I was a bullpen artist with Standford and Sanvick.
I started out doing small designs that would be part of an
advertisement. Then after a few years, I got a represen-
tative who showed my work to the potential buyers, and
the art directors started designing ads around my art-
work. Eventually, two friends and I decided to start our
own little design group in San Francisco. We called it
Butte, Herrero, and Hyde. That was March, 1953. We
were very successful. We stayed in business for thirteen
years, and we just devoted ourselves to it completely.
Then, unexpectedly, one partner, Bruce Butte,
decided to quit and be a painter. He was a very good
painter before he got into commercial art. I was leaning
toward fine art myself, because I was really involved
with Nate Oliveira at the time. He was encouraging me
to give it a try. I was still doing design work, but I was
losing interest in it after my first wife and I separated.
Then I met Janet in 1980. She was in advertising also. I
moved in with her, and then I told her that I was going
to give up commercial art and my income was just going
to Hollywood and work for Walt Disney. And they said,
“Well, it’s a lot of hard work and they don’t pay much.”
I was very disillusioned because of their comments on the
pay. I was thinking of money even then. I wanted to earn
a living and help my mother out. But also, I think even
then my heart was set on being an artist. I was saving my
money in my late teens because I wanted to go to an art
college. That was my goal, to build a foundation of art so
it could help me in the future. But while I was in high
school I took every art class I could find.
KR—What happened next?
LH —Pearl Harbor happened next. I was twenty-one.
They had the draft at that time, and when they attacked
Pearl Harbor, I was just ripe to be drafted. So to avoid
the Army a friend suggested I join him in enlisting in the
Coast Guard, which we did. I served in San Francisco, at
a Coast Guard receiving station. I was a seaman, first-
class. And when they found out I was an artist, they put
me on the base paper to do artwork. So for the next three
years and six months—that was the duration of the war
for me—I did nothing but draw. I just created things for
the little Barracks Watch paper.
Then after the war, I didn’t know what to do. I still
wanted to go to art school, but I didn’t have any money.
Then the GI Bill of Rights came on the scene. The gov-
ernment would subsidize any veteran at any school he
wanted to attend. And that was my savior right there. If
it weren’t for that, I’d never have made it to art school. I
went to the California College of Arts and Crafts in
Oakland. I think I had some of my happiest memories at
Arts and Crafts. I couldn’t get enough of it. I went to all
the summer sessions, so it amounted to about four years.
And I met a lot of interesting people, like Nathan
Oliveira, who’s been a lifelong friend.
KR—What was your focus at CCAC?
22 23
far left: Popeye, 1932, Pen and ink on paper, XX” x XX”
left: Benny Goodman, 1940, Graphite on illustrative board, , XX” x XX”
right: Otis Oldfield, CCAC instructor, 1947, Pastel on paper, 20” x 26”
far right: Alphabet series, 1956, Pen and ink on illustrative board, XX” x XX”
to think, ‘Well, I’ll take some of their thoughts and try to
distort like they do, but keep it under control.” I use both
things. I see both things. And that’s what happened, and
here it is: I’m working with this style now of distortion.
And apparently it’s accepted.
KR—Aside from the landscape of the Napa Valley, you’ve
also painted a lot of images of Italy and the South of
France. Will you talk about that?
LH —Oh, that’s been a big influence. That’s what started
the house. I love Italian farmhouses. I’ve seen so many of
them. And, of course, they’re all stone, very thick, and I
was painting Italian scenes of landscapes with Tuscan
houses, stone houses and that sort of thing. Janet and I
had never been to Italy. But after we got married, we took
our first trip to Italy, and we loved it. We’d go off the beat-
en path and look for places, little rundown stone houses.
After a couple of trips to Italy and a few paintings that
I’d done, I actually painted a farmhouse that I thought
I would like to build one day. We talked it over and we
agreed that this is what we wanted. We had no architect.
I designed it, laid it out. My contractor hired the right
people to come in and build it from my sketches. It’s very
simple. We used a double wall construction. That gave us
the depth so we could use concrete in the windowsills
and also little niches to put things in.
KR—So, do you feel that Napa Valley is now your home?
LH —Absolutely! We’ve planted our roots, both literally
and figuratively. We were born and raised in the city. I
never lived anywhere else but the cities of Oakland and
San Francisco. But the Napa Valley is so nice, it has a
quiet feeling up here. Agricultural. Everything starts
early in the morning, and ends early in the afternoon,
when the heat demands that you rest. I like that. It suits
the way I paint — high energy in the morning, and run-
ning on empty in the late afternoon.
to hit the bottom. I asked her, “Can you support me for
a year?” She said, “I can support you for about a year.
After that, you’re on your own.”
I’d been painting since Butte, Herrero, and Hyde
broke up. One day, an old acquaintance, Bill Dodge, who
had opened a gallery in Carmel, invited me to send him
some work. I sent him a painting I had done of the Brandt
Point Lighthouse in Nantucket and he hung it in his
gallery. About a year later, he called to say he had sold it.
I couldn’t believe it. I gave him more paintings. They
began to sell faster. They were seen by Carolyn Walsh of
the Sailor’s Valentine Gallery in Nantucket, and I started
sending paintings to her gallery as well.
KR—Were you happy with these new developments in
your career?
LH —Yes, it worked out very nicely, because I painted
East Coast subjects for Sailor’s Valentine Gallery and
West Coast images for Bill Dodge Gallery. When Janet
and I got married, we moved to San Francisco, to the
South Park area. We had a great time there, in an old
Victorian house that we remodeled to include our home
and my studio. We lived there for twenty years. We still
stay there when we’re in the city. We came up here to
Calistoga on weekly trips to Janet’s grandmother’s house.
I decided I wanted to paint here, and we found some
acreage up on Mount St. Helena. I built a huge studio, all
glass. In that space, I was able to flex my muscles and
really paint big. And I started painting the things that I
saw around me up there. Janet showed some of my work
to the I. Wolk Gallery in St. Helena. Ira gave me a one-
man show, and it sold out.
I’m positive it had a lot to do with the subject mat-
ter, but also the fact that I exaggerated everything.
Everything is deliberately distorted. I did that with my
landscapes. I flattened everything out. I distorted up to a
point. But I could control it; whereas it wasn’t like the
true, primitive artists, the unschooled artists. I was very
influenced by them to begin with, and that’s what led me
24 25
far left: Kansas Landscape, 1976, Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 18”
left: Orcas, 1978, Acrylic on canvas, 16” x 16” right: Cranberry Harvest, 1984, Acrylic on canvas, 26” x 20”
For every painting I do, I try to add something a lit-
tle different to it, just keep moving on. I’m just on my
own path. And it’s nothing like, I’ll have to say, my good
friend Oliveira would do. He kids me about painting
these big, oversize women. We kid each other back and
forth, and that doesn’t bother me.
KR—My last question is about your relationship to your
work. Would you share any thoughts you have about that?
LH —Well, I love to do it. I love art. I’ll never retire. When
I go, I want to be at the easel, painting! I feel like the
happiest fellow in the whole Napa Valley.
When I start a painting, I have sort of a game plan.
I create these little comprehensives. I project those up on
the canvas, and I outline the whole thing in black paint.
When you get it up that big on the canvas, it takes on a
different perspective, and I often change the layout or
the color. But the actual drawing is all done beforehand.
On average, I’d say I have three going at a time.
That’s the exciting part of it, starting a new, fresh
canvas—a big white area, filling it up—and then putting
that aside and starting another one. Then I go back to
the first one and it looks fresh to me. I like to keep a feel-
ing of freshness all the way through.
And then I like to have Janet look at my work in
progress. She’s been my rock, my honest critic. She
knows I want her to be honest. Don’t flatter me. Just tell
me if you like it or you don’t. She will. She doesn’t hold
back. She comes in with a fresh eye, and I usually say,
“She’s right. Why did I do that?”
KR—In your most recent paintings, it seems as if you’re
exploring new territory, taking some of the techniques
you’ve used in the past and using them to make riskier
kinds of paintings.
LH —When I started painting, I was trying to break that
slick, hard commercial look, break away from that by
actually painting with big blobs or dots. I looked at
Georges Seurat’s work. It’s totally different from the way
I use it, but that’s what started it all. And now, lately, I’ve
been having fun with it, just loosening it up a little. And
I’m also using more offbeat colors, playing around with
textures, like in my painting of smudge pots. That paint-
ing triggered off some other ideas I wanted to pursue of
the smudge pots. They keep going through my head now
because I like what happened there.
26 27
left: Judy and Marge, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 24” X 30”
9
Foreword
ntering the Herreros’ Calistoga estate through the
rusted gate and past a shimmering olive grove that fronts
the Tuscan-style house and studio, one is led directly into
the enchanted world where Lowell Herrero makes his
home and conjures up his sentimental landscapes. The
Napa Valley, an envied bucolic setting, has been Herrero’s
home for more than a decade. As co-inhab tants of this
region, we witness with Lowell the colorful growth of the
vineyards, the brilliant yellow of the spring mustard, the
bright greens of the vines’ new leaves and the ripening of
the grapes’ color. As we watch the rhythm of harvest with
admiration, we are fortunate to have Herrero’s artistic eye
alongside us delving into deeper points of observation.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome this excep-
tional artist to the galleries of the Napa Valley Museum
for a retrospective exhibition of his work produced from
1995 to the present. The museum’s mission, focusing on
the art, history, and heritage of the Napa Valley, is
brought to life through Lowell Herrero’s work. His sunny
canvases depicting field laborers and families amidst
vineyards, fields of flowers, and groves of olives have
become windows onto the landscape and agricultural
work outside his studio. Born and bred a Californian and
a longtime resident of Napa Valley, Herrero is not only a
local treasure but a nationally known artist whose work
has charmed the senses of viewers and collectors alike.
E
Contents
6 Foreword by Jennifer Garden
8 Joy in the Landscape by Kate Rothrock
24 Interview Lowell Herrero with Kate Rothrock
42 Plates
168 Chronology
221 Acknowledgements