Santa Maria arts icon Nat Fast meant a lot of things to a lot of people. For many in the arts community, he is remembered as a constant, steadfast support of the arts community, whether it was through his involvement with early PCPA productions or his part in helping found the Santa Maria Arts Council. However, everyone—this writer included—remembers his smile and the glowing presence that shone through each of his works.
The Santa Barbara County Arts Commission organized a memorial exhibition for Nat, who passed away last year, titled A Mindful Vision: The Legacy of Nat Fast, which will be showing at the Betteravia Gallery South in Santa Maria at the Joseph Centeno Betteravia Government Building. Nat and his daughter, Marti, who teaches and directs the art gallery at Allan Hancock College, have both collaborated with the arts commission on many projects over the years.
Marti was approached by Rita Ferri, the visual arts coordinator and curator of collections for the commission, to co-curate the show with Betteravia Gallery South Curator John Hood, who is also an instructor at Hancock. This will be the first exhibition of Nat’s work since his passing last year, Marti Fast explained.
“I think we’re going to have about 20 pieces of work,” Marti said. “The core of the work comes from my siblings; we all have lent work, and we are borrowing some from other folks. We are trying to give an overview of the different themes in his career.”
Nat taught art history and several kinds of visual art in his time, but he also took time to travel the world, where he found plenty of subjects to draw. Many of his sketches ended up being realized as watercolor paintings, one of his favorite paint media.
“It’s hard for me to guess just the number of paintings in his lifetime. It’s probably in the thousands,” Marti said. “And if you count sketches and drawings, he was a prolific sketchbook artist, and we’ve got dozens of sketchbooks he completed, every single page, and many of those are from PCPA rehearsals.”
Several themes permeated throughout Nat’s career: He enjoyed landscapes, architecture, trees, and human figures. Oftentimes his paintings would include all of these aspects, perhaps in the form of countryside with a barn or house and people among the scenery.
“He was an amazing draftsman and he really enjoyed architecture, so he would really concentrate on that,” Marti said. “He loved to render all the architectural detail. The more difficult it was, to draw, the better; he just loved it.”
Whether a Nat Fast work depicts a European cathedral plaza or a babbling brook in the Sierras, it is unmistakable. His watercolor style was heavily influenced by realism, Marti explained.
“He called his style ‘idealized realism,’” she said, “and that’s the beauty of being an artist: You can make things what you want or what you wish them to be.”
She said it was Ferri with the arts commission who suggested the title, A Mindful Vision.
“Dad always had a great deal of intention when he worked,” she said. “He would sometimes do two or three versions of a painting before he decided he liked it.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is glad Nat Fast shared his vision the world. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 8-15, 2014.