Just Looking Gallery is celebrating its birthday and its ability to bring art to SLO for the last 40 years 

One of San Luis Obispo's oldest art galleries just turned 40, and it's ready to celebrate how far it has come.

Ralph Gorton first moved to SLO to work for Diablo Canyon in the 1980s and managed to become an art collector for the work of Patrick Nagel in his free time. Nagel was a commercial artist known for his art deco-inspired portraits of women in the 1980s, according to Heritage Auctions.

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• Photo Courtesy Of Ralph Gorton
• 40 YEARS STRONG Ralph Gorton began Just Looking Gallery four decades ago after moving to SLO to work for Diablo Canyon and creating one of the largest personal collections of Patrick Nagel's artwork.

"I spent about $75,000 buying his work, which was a lot of money in the early '80s," he told New Times. "I was sitting on a goldmine, and I knew that. I was going to parlay that collection into a gallery, I just wasn't originally sure where it would be."

He searched from Santa Barbara to San Rafael and everywhere in between to find the perfect spot to support his collection, but eventually decided to stay in SLO because it lacked an art gallery but was rich in tourism from the wine industry. Just Looking Gallery was born.

"Before I opened the gallery, I was talking with Pat Nagel, and we were discussing what would be a good name. In the beginning I thought I'd call it Creekside Gallery because we were over in the Mission Mall," he said. "But he kept shaking his head no and said call it Just Looking because every time I go into a gallery, you have to tell the staff 'I'm just looking.' So, I thought about it for a day and then it dawned on me, why would I question the most recognizable artist on the planet at that time."

Just Looking Gallery started primarily with Nagel's work, but Gorton slowly started showing, buying, and hiring other artists to work for the gallery.

"My ex-wife and I used to travel to LA all the time to see artists since we'd go to art expos, and as the gallery grew, the community became more fluid," he said. "We began to grow and prosper as a gallery, as a business in downtown. In the beginning, we were probably 85 percent locals of our clients and 15 percent tourists, but now it's completely flipped. It's 85 percent tourists and 15 percent locals."

Gorton said his gallery's been traditionally more into art deco and postmodern era work, and he doesn't tend to stray too far from it.

"[For artists] it's an interview process really. Firstly their body of work has to catch my eye, then I have to make sure that they're willing to work in a structured environment," he said. "They can't just randomly paint whatever they want because that's a formula for failure. We have to pay what we think the clients are going to and make it available in a price range that makes sense. Also, create a body of work that falls in line with the history of the gallery. Deco era would be in the '30s and postmodern would be somewhere between 1946 and 1964."

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• Image Courtesy Of Ralph Gorton
• CENTRAL COAST PRINTS The largest display of artwork at the gallery is from Steve Thomas, who is currently focused on creating vintage-style travel posters of the Central Coast.

Today, Gorton has multiple artists working for the gallery, most notable is Steve Thomas who is currently focused on creating vintage-style travel posters of the Central Coast.

Thomas' Central Coast posters include SLO's Seven Sisters with mountain peaks that sit above a bed of grayish clouds fading toward the back of the print, revealing Morro Rock and the blue of the surrounding ocean.

While on display in the gallery, Thomas' prints are available for purchase online at Just Looking's website.

John Hanley, who began showing his pieces at the gallery on March 11, attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago and soon after began freelancing for Best Buy, Budweiser, Coca Cola, Chevrolet, McDonald's, Dick's Sporting Goods, BMW, and more.

"He retired and reached out to me through a friend because when you've been in the business for years, people are always resourcing. But he wanted to become a fine arts painter and he sent me his work, and I invited him to come up [to SLO] and he brought about 30 paintings, which were mostly movie posters," Gorton said. "He was such a great painter, I thought, 'Well, we can take his skill set and take him away from doing movie posters and start doing sort of historical images of San Luis Obispo County.'''

The gallery currently has five of Hanley's pieces on display, including a woman in a striped bathing suit digging clams up on Pismo Beach in the 1940s. The painting has a unique mix of dull yellows, blues, and greens that give it the allure of a photo taken with an Instagram filter.

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• Photo By Samantha Herrera
• OLD SAN LUIS One of Just Looking Gallery's new artists, John Hanley, created a series of five paintings highlighting SLO County between the 1940s to the 1980s. Hanley uses an oil-wash technique on Masonite to get a dreamlike effect for his paintings.

Most of Hanley's work has this dreamlike effect, which he achieves using an oil-wash technique on Masonite.

The gallery has some new events coming up to celebrate its birthday, including releasing four commemorative posters from four different artists in the gallery, which will be released three months apart. The first one from Thomas is currently on display, Gorton said.

"The first one's already been released, and its title is For A Better Tomorrow," he said. "It's been released for about a month, and it's currently in our front window and selling well. We'll do another one around September and then another one for Christmas." Δ

Reach Staff Writer Samantha Herrera at [email protected].