Armand Cabrera

Biographies

Armand Cabrera

Armand Cabrera was born in San Francisco in 1955. He currently resides in beautiful Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. A dedicated landscape painter, Armand finishes canvases as large as 36" x 48" on location. Armand's style is to paint alla prima, completing his paintings in one sitting in the studio or out of doors.

Armand has spent the past 12 years as a successful production artist in the computer games industry, creating conceptual designs, background art, and special effects animation and storyboarding. His clients include Lucas Arts, Virgin Entertainment and Paramount Pictures.

Now a full time fine artist, Armand Cabrera is represented by 11 galleries accross the country. He has had numerous one-man exhibitions and is represented in corporate and private collections around the world. A popular workshop teacher, Armand is currently writing his instructional book on painting. international Artist Magazine, Art of the West and Southwest Art Magazines have recognized Armand Cabrera as one of the premier, contemporary plein air painters in the country.

The first drawing Armand Cabrera recalls creating as a child depicted cowboys sitting around a campfire. When received a box of paints at age 15, he began painting comic book figures, then graduated to seascapes when he was in his twenties. Although he had no formal art training, Cabrera began to sell his paintings while working a variety of jobs that allowed him to pay his living expenses.

He also began to send samples of his work to publishers in the East Coast, hoping to land work illustrating book covers. "I got a lot of rejection letters," he says. "I put them on the walls of my studio, where they basically covered the walls. It was a great motivator."

Eventually working as an electronics technician, Cabrera landed a job creating backgrounds for computer games, then began to do free-lance illustration work. Although he continues working today as an art director for Totally Games in San Rafael, California, Cabrera paints what he loves--landscapes--in the evening and on weekends, often working until 1 a.m. "I've never needed a lot of sleep," he says. "I do four or five paintings a week, although not all are good ones. On weekends and in the summer, when the days are longer, I paint on location after work."

Living in Marin County, Cabrera is just a few miles from China Camp State Park on the San Francisco Bay, a favorite setting that includes an old Chinese fishing village and hundreds of hiking trails. "I love the land." he says. "It sounds hokey, but I feel this timeless connection when I'm out there. It's so beautiful and transitory, I'm in the moment. It will never be repeated, never exactly the same. I'm trying to capture the unique moment of that experience and to convey my love and respect for the land."

Cabrera paints with oils but does his on-site sketches in watercolor. His efforts were nicely rewarded when he placed in the Top 100 of the Arts for the Parks competition in 2000 and 2001, but his greatest rewards come from collectors of his work. "The highest compliment I can receive is when people tell me they are pulled into my painting," he says.

July/August 2002 Art of the West



"Late in a Summer Day"	"Autumn Glow"	"Six in the Evening"

"Middday Drycreek"	"Twilight Moon"	"Morning Sun"

"Rich Farmland"	"Morning in the Forest"