Entering 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. TheNapa Valley an envied bucolic setting, has been Herrero's home for more than a decade. As coinhabitants 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.

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THROUGHOUT A DYNAMIC LIFE that has spanned the Great Depression,the Second World War, the rise of Silicon Valley, and the dawn of the twenty-first century, Lowell Herrero has turned his passion for living into art. From his home in Cahfornia, he has traveled to Tuscany,Provence, and Spain, absorbing the lessons of their sensuous landscapes. The colors of horizons and rich earth, the sensations of sunlight,and the fragrance of flower-covered hillsides mingle in his imagination and flow through his paintbrush onto his canvases.

For many years, Herrero maintained a highly successful career as a commercial designer and illustrator, stealing time from his pressing work schedule to spend hours at the easel. Eventually, his desire to paint full time prevailed, and in I982 he gave up advertising to devote himself to the studio. Herrero's decade-long love affair with the Napa Valley is the immediate inspiration for his most recent body of work. The paintings reproduced in these pages celebrate his enchantment with nature's beauty and fecundity, and the deep human connection to it. Yet these are imaginary landscapes, created in his mind's eye from his keen observation and experience.

Herrero feels a deep affinity with farmers working the land. He renders them bursting with life, over-large, and enduring -- extensions of the very soil they cultivate. In his paintings, vineyards stretch into the distance as grape pickers enjoy lunch under a cloudless blue sky.Lavender harvesters bend to their task, and a field of rolled bales tells us the hard work of haying is at an end. Each painting invites us to smile with pleasure and enjoy the inner vitality and plenitude of the landscape. But above all, the paintings project the irrepressible joie de vivre of an artist who knows how to live.

Lowell Herrero presents eighty-four paintings completed since 1995. It is published on the occasion of Herrero's one-man exhibition at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville, California. This volume offers readers a chance to become better acquainted with the artist through an essay on the origins and development of his technique and style, as well as an in-depth interview about his life in art.

Foreword by Jennifer Garden

Joy in the Landscape by Kate Rothrock

Interview Lowell Herrero with Kate Rothrock

Plates

Chronology

Acknowledgments