Art Chat with Erin Lee Gafill (Recording)

Finding Jane, the Discovery and Resurrection of the Life and Work of Artist Jane Gallatin Powers 1868-1944

Over 40 years ago, artists and life-partners Erin Lee Gafill and Tom Birmingham began to research and write about Erin’s great-great-grandmother, the artist Jane Gallatin Powers. This pursuit led each of them deeper into their own art and writing and took them on a journey around the world and back again sleuthing out clues to JGP’s story and her celebrated career in California and Europe.

Jane Gallatin Powers was an American socialite, Carmel bohemian, award-winning California Impressionist, and European exhibited Modernist.

Mother of four children in whom she inspired heartfelt devotion, she visited the sick and ailing, gave tea parties for San Francisco high society, and played hostess for her attorney-husband Frank Hubbard Powers many business functions.

Together, they co-founded Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of California’ earliest art colonies, imbuing the budding town with their personal vision celebrating art, music, theatre, and personal freedom.

From Carmel to Paris in the 20’s to Capri in the 30’s, her life celebrated Art and Faith above all. Yet her last days found her alone, isolated and cut off from funds, in war-torn Rome.

Her riches-to-rags story takes us on a  mesmerizing ride from California post-Gold Rush, through sea-changes in the art world in America and Europe, love lost and found, and through two World Wars.  Though celebrated in her lifetime, after her death, her life and work were forgotten for decades.  But her impact on the California Central Coast can be felt to this day in her beloved Carmel, and through the creative work of her descendants, most notably her granddaughter Lolly Fassett’s restaurant, Nepenthe, in Big Sur, a Mecca for artists, writers, and creative thinkers for over seven decades.

Her impact is felt in Erin’s work, as well, as Erin initially only painting in order to better understand her great great grandmother’s story.

About Erin

An award-winning painter and author, Erin Gafill has inspired people around the world with her inspirational art, heartfelt stories, and uniquely engaging teaching methods. Her work bridges art, craft, and community, weaving observation, intuition, and imagination into her painting, writing, teaching, and public speaking. A fifth-generation California artist, she was born in Big Sur, California in 1963, the daughter of a beatnik and a flower child. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Carmel’s first artist-in-residence. Growing up at her grandparents’ legendary restaurant, Nepenthe, a mecca for poets, bohemians and dreamers, she drew inspiration from its ever-changing cast of characters as well as the stunning and mystical beauty of the coast.

Erin is the founder of the nonprofit Big Sur Arts Initiative, and a founding member of the Monterey Bay Plein Air Painters Association (MBPAPA). In 2001 Erin was honored to serve as the first American Artist-in-Residence at the Hamada International Children’s Museum, Hamada, Japan.

In 2009, she and her husband Tom Birmingham were named Champions of the Arts by the Arts Council of Monterey County and were honored by the United States Congress for their service to the community through the arts.

Her exhibit Color Duets was the featured 2021 Spring/Summer show for the Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, California, followed the next summer by a solo exhibit, California Atmosphere at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California. She is the author of a coffee-table art book, Color Duets, with Kaffe Fassett, and a memoir about life/work balance, Drinking from a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope. Both books are available at www.colorduets.com.