Planet: Gruber painting depicts ‘Out of This World!’ type scene

August 14, 2009
Santa Paula News
By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula TimesA painting that drew a lot of comment at the July Hot Summer Jazz & Art show is a first of its kind for artist Lynda Gruber: it’s a depiction in oil of a comic book cover for a sci-fi magazine. “Planet” is the name of the work that fits right into this year’s Moonlight at the Ranch III: “Out of This World!” sci-fi theme, but Gruber, the recently elected president of the Santa Paula Society of the Arts, said the work was inspired by her longtime companion Bill Spicer.“Bill was in the comic business for years and years” as a noted dialogue writer for a variety of publications. “Bill has that comic book with the cover on it, and he decided it would be a good idea to do something like it... and,” Gruber noted, “I thought it looked like a lot of fun actually.”It was: Gruber painted the cosmic collision between a man, a woman and a space monster in oil using bright comic book colors. “I’d never done anything like a comic book cover,” a form that requires a strong, graphic type of design done with in-your-face colors to stand out among others displayed in a magazine rack.But Gruber said even the theme, an outer space related scene, is a subject she had not seriously considered trying in the past, “although I always wanted to.... I had an inkling of where I was headed” with the work that drew many admiring looks and “a lot of comments” at the July 11th Hot Summer Jazz & Art.
Gruber, who also works in other mediums, is also a noted graphic artist and photograph restorer. She once tackled an “alien head that was pretty spacey. It looks more like a robot, it has a really shiny, reflective head” that stands out against a Southwestern type landscape that makes one think of Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell is the fabled locale where supposedly a space ship crashed on July 8, 1947, killing several, er, tourists from outer space.For more information on Gruber’s work or the Santa Paula Society of the Arts, call 525-1104 or visit the website www.thespsa.com.For more information on the August 22 sci-fi celebrating Moonlight at the Ranch III: “Out of This World!” benefiting the Santa Paula Police & Fire Foundation and Chamber of Commerce, call 525-5561 or 525-1890 or visit the website at www.moonlightattheranch.com.



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