For Roston, it’s as if the woman on the canvas had cried with relief over the happy reunion with her creator.Īlthough most of Roston’s paintings are representative - flowers, still lifes, portraits, birds and other wildlife - she has a great interest in doing abstract and multimedia work. When the painting was being reframed, a drop of framing glue dripped on the woman’s cheek and dried. ![]() She bought it back for $13 and restored it. Years later, she found it again, dirty and unframed, on the floor of a resale shop. ![]() One of her favorite paintings is called “The Tear,” a pink pastel-colored oil of a woman in profile that she sold to a collector many years ago for $250. “Although she investigates shapes and space, she articulates her message most strongly through color,” said McGuire, who exhibited some of Roston’s floral paintings in the 2008 group show “On Flowers.” “Her lively canvases are filled with brilliant color and layers upon layers of pigment, giving her expressionistic paintings a three-dimensional quality.”Īlthough she has sold a few paintings over the years, Roston said she always does it “regretfully,” because she has an emotional connection to each piece and it’s hard to see them as commodities. Karen McGuire, director of the Cannon Gallery in Carlsbad, describes Roston’s painting style as “lush and sumptuous.” Twenty-five years ago, Irv added on a large backyard art studio where his wife could paint and teach art classes. The home they have shared since 1965 was the first house built in La Costa. She had to drop out early, though, when her family moved to San Diego where her husband co-developed the La Costa Spa & Resort. When she began selling some of her paintings in the early 1960s, she applied to L.A.’s Otis College of Art and Design and was accepted. Her varied subjects included flowers from her garden, her children, her pets, tropical birds, fish, wildlife and photographs from magazines and newspapers. And inspired by the bold colors and thickly layered pigment in Italian painter Nicola Simbari’s work, she became adept at painting with a palette knife. Drawn to the impressionist works of Monet, Manet, Pissarro and Gauguin, she experimented with color, contrast and brush strokes. Using painting tutorial books by Leon Franks, she learned form and technique. She decided instead to teach herself by studying the work of the great masters. “When I went home and told my husband what Antoyan had said, he made me quit studying art,” Roston recalled with a laugh. ![]() Although she has lost count of how many paintings she owns, Roston says she has given at least 100 more away to local hospitals, senior care centers, charity auctions, family and friends. Virtually every inch of wall space in the 4,000-square-foot house she shares with husband, Irv Roston, is filled with vividly colored large-scale oils, acrylics, watercolors, charcoal drawings, pastels and mixed-media pieces. Cannon Art Gallery, the La Costa Spa & Resort gallery and the Enchanted Light Gallery in Del Mar, but her favorite exhibition space is her own home. Roston’s work has been exhibited locally at Carlsbad’s William D. 9, and the self-taught artist is still actively painting and exploring new techniques, media and inspirations. If Muriel Roston invites you into her La Costa home to see her paintings, be prepared for a surprise … and bring a snack, because it will take the better part of an hour to see all of the 150-plus canvases that fill the walls and studio of her house.
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