Fine Art · Wine Country · Sonoma

Willow
LaLand

"What I try to achieve in my work is the feeling that you could actually penetrate the surface and touch things inside."

The Artist

Rooted in Wine Country

Willow LaLand grew up in Sonoma County surrounded by the landscapes, light, and culture that would become the heart of her work. Over twenty years ago she and her husband chose Healdsburg as home — not just for its beauty, but for the way the wine community and the arts community are so deeply intertwined there. In 2006 they started Yeilding Wine, a small Bordeaux blend, and that world of harvest, fermentation, and cellar light began showing up on her canvases in ways she hadn't expected.

Willow is an active presence in the region's art scene — a regular at art and wine festivals throughout the Bay Area and Sonoma, and a passionate advocate for arts education. A portion of proceeds from select works has been donated to KRCB in support of arts programming.

Her work hangs in private collections and gallery walls throughout California and beyond, and she welcomes collectors to her studio to experience the work — and the process — firsthand.

The Technique

Flemish Roots, California Light

Willow works from a technique developed by the Flemish painters of the 1600s — building each canvas from a luminous foundation of warm reds, yellows, and oranges before a single detail is painted. The background goes in wet, colors moving across the canvas over five or six hours as she works on balance and tone. Then it rests. Three weeks sometimes, before the detail work begins.

The result is that particular quality of depth — the sense that light is coming from within the painting rather than falling on its surface. A single layer of paint gives you a flat image. Layer after layer, each one transparent, gives you the illusion that you could reach into the canvas and touch the stem of a wine glass, feel the cool of the water, smell the turned earth of the vineyard row.

That is what Willow is after, every time she paints.