About the Artist
Bret Arenson
Bret Arenson is an abstract painter who lives and works in Sausalito, California, with his studio in the Schoonmaker Building on the Sausalito waterfront. His paintings come from a direct, physical way of working: every gesture is spontaneous. He doesn't plan the image so much as listen to his body, letting an impulse direct the brush and building the composition from the way gestures pile up. He earned his BA in Fine Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1985, where he studied with William Brice, Donald Suggs and Chris Burden. Music has run alongside painting all his life. He is a professional guitarist who has played for years in San Francisco and Paris, and the founder of the Duo Kings, a harmonica and guitar duo. His time in Paris also brought his early exhibitions there, at Bonobos (2004) and Atelier Arnaud Marie (2007). Bret works in series, and there are many of them: Spirit House, Gazing Window, Koan, Nature Screen, Ambient Panel, Achromatic Screen, Dark Ecstatic Screen, Proximity Scrolls, Topographical Quill Drawings and more. His paintings, in acrylic and oil on canvas, range from 30-inch squares to tall 66-by-42-inch canvases and multi-panel works up to 12 feet wide. He also makes his own brushes and pens from natural and found objects, so each tool adds its own mark, and he draws with goose quills and coloured inks on paper. In 2024 the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausalito showed his immersive installation Mastery Of No Attainment (The Door Of The White Father Dissolves), 25 feet wide on five panels. He has had solo shows at the Bay Model (2018, 2024), Coldwell Banker in Mill Valley (2022, 2025) and the Sausalito Public Library (2019), and takes part in group shows at The Drawing Room Annex in San Francisco, the Sausalito Center for the Arts and Gallery Sausalito. For Bret, the inner experience, the material and the finished painting are one whole, and his curiosity about what the next gesture will reveal keeps him painting.
“Bret Arenson is a Sausalito abstract painter whose canvases grow from spontaneous, bodily gesture. Working in acrylic and oil, often with handmade brushes from found objects, he paints in series such as Spirit House, Gazing Window, Koan and Nature Screen.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
The Painting Process
Bret's process starts in the body, not in a sketch. When he paints, every gesture is spontaneous. He relaxes, finds his balance and waits for an impulse, then lets it come fully, never knowing where the brush will go next. He doesn't build a composition from planned shapes; he knows how gestures tend to pile up, and he lets the picture form from that accumulation. Tools matter. Bret makes many of his own brushes and pens from natural and found objects, and each one leaves its own particular mark. He is just as curious about found and natural substances and surfaces, and about what they can say when used in a completely direct way. In his drawings he works with goose quills and coloured inks on paper. On canvas he layers acrylic and oil, often in series that explore one idea from many sides: the tall Spirit House canvases, the square Gazing Window and Koan paintings, the large Nature Screen and Dark Ecstatic Screen works. Some pieces grow into multi-panel works or immersive installations, like the five-panel, 25-foot painting shown at the Bay Model in 2024. For Bret, the inner experience, the putting down of material and the physical result are one whole. He never set out to draw in an automatic way; the discovery surprised him, and the feeling of working like this is unlike any other. It is curiosity about what he will find next that keeps him going.
