Oceans of experience

Alicia Robinson

Not everyone in Newport Beach is blessed with an ocean view, but

painter Carole Boller’s work offers even those who live miles inland

their own bit of sea, sand and sky.

A longtime painter who settled in Newport Beach in 2000, Boller

opened the Boller Gallery on Friday, a studio where she paints and

sells her work.

She’s painted all her life, she said, and although she earned her

living by teaching, she continued to paint and take art classes. As

her success in art grew, she went to teaching part-time, and after a

summer artist’s residency at Yosemite National Park, Boller began

traveling California and showing her work.

“I just painted through the Sierras and came down the coast and

met some pretty great people,” she said. “And for some reason,

Newport Beach just held me here for a few days. I feel that this is

my home.”

The coastal city had all she wanted as an artist -- ocean, boats,

weather that allows her to work outdoors and no bugs to get stuck in

her paints.

Lately, she’s been painting beach scenes and depictions of

families and friends, but she gets inspired by a variety of

surroundings. She has a pilot’s license, and her flights have

provided fodder for paintings of the sky and cloud formations.

The painting she used on the sign outside her gallery epitomizes

the things she loves about Newport Beach. Based on the beach near

17th Street, it depicts a figure in the foreground walking away from

the viewer across an expanse of sun-kissed sand toward a horizon

dotted with colorful beach umbrellas and sunbathers.

Boller plans to keep her connection to education by offering

painting classes for children, and she also works with the Orange

County and San Diego chapters of the Multiple Sclerosis Society

organizing art therapy programs.

And when the weather is nice -- which is nearly every day on the

peninsula -- Boller will open her gallery doors to work in case

curious passersby want to take a peek.

Tricia Sims, who works a few doors down in the Newport Landing

fishing shop, said there aren’t a lot of other artists in the

immediate neighborhood, but she expected Boller’s gallery to fill a

niche for tourists who like to buy paintings to remind them of their

vacation travels.

“I think they’ll be really good for the people down here because

it’s a high-income area, so it’s something that I feel will succeed,”

she said.

Boller said a number of her friends in the art world are excited

about her shop and are interested in finding their own spaces in the

Balboa area.

With the reopening of the Balboa Theater anticipated in 2007 and

rumors of a glass artist and another gallery moving to the area in

the near future, Boller said she can see the peninsula developing its

own art community like the eclectic neighborhoods New York City is

known for.

“I’d like to see this start to be a Balboa SoHo,” she said.

The Boller Gallery is at 309 Palm St., Suite F or call (949)

566-0009 for information.