The Wildling Art Museum sponsored four slide-illustrated lectures this winter on intriguing themes of art and nature. The lectures were scheduled for alternate Tuesday evenings, beginning February 1. All lectures were in Stacy Hall at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2901 Nojoqui Ave. in Los Olivos, and began at 7:30 p.m.

The speaker for the first lecture on February 1 was Alfred Harrison, Jr., owner of the North Point Gallery in San Francisco which specializes in American and early California paintings. Mr. Harri Harrison is the grandson of the famous collector of American antiques, Henry Francis duPont, founder of the Winterthur Museum near Wilmington, Delaware. Harrison’s lecture, entitled, “From Winterthur to Yosemite: Collecting across the Generations” provided a personal glimpse into the impulse behind collecting, his own and his grandfathers. Harrison discussed how his philosophy as a collector developed, and how his understanding of the paintings’ significance deepened through his ownership of them. Works by such Eastern artists as Gifford, Heade and Church were compared to works of the same period by such California painters as Hill, Keith and Yelland.

On February 15, Patrick Dougherty, an environmental artist from North Carolina, who is constructing a site-specific sculpture at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden utilizing plant material growing there, spoke about his ideas and his processes, and showed slides of some of the more than 100 works he has constructed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. An engaging speaker, Dougherty’s lecture was entitled “Primitive Ways in an Accelerated World.” He says, “I construct large temporary structures that are built on site from tree saplings gathered in the nearby landscape. Snagged together without the use of tools or any supportive hardware, these sculptures respond directly to their surroundings and interact with a particular space to build drama and visual excitement. Most installations take two to three weeks to complete and during the eight hour work days, I meet the users of the space and am able to react to the subtleties of the given situation.”

Jeanette Sainz, a rancher from Los Alamos, is famous for her photographs of the Calochortus Lily, and that was the title of her slide presentation on March 8. Commonly called the “Mariposa Lily,” this wild member of the Lilliacea family ranges in size from the tip of your fingernail to shoulder height, its colors from chrome yellow to luminescent pink, and its shapes from tulip-like to passion-flower form, and Ms Sainz has photographed all species living on the North American continent. Her lecture has been presented to many groups throughout California.

The final lecture in the series on March 22 was presented by Harvey Jones, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum of California. Jones is extremely knowledgeable about California art and is responsible for acquiring the fine collection of California 19th and 20th century art in the Oakland Museum. In his lecture, entitled “California: From Wilderness State to Real Estate,” Jones spoke about the development of California landscape painting from the early works of Thomas Hill and William Keith, through Impressionism to contemporary artists of today. He will emphasize the changes in attitude toward landscape, changes in style of representation and especially the contrasts in “appearance” of California’s land in transition under agriculture, industry and urbanism.