Nine years ago, California artist Bruce Katz was featured in a Plein Air Today series called “My Favorite Place to Paint.” Back then, it was the countryside outside of San Francisco. We followed up with him to see if – or how – his locale preference has changed.

Bruce Katz joins the latest wave of Bay Area painters to explore abstraction, while retaining a foothold in representation.

What would you get if you combined the approaches of Edward Hopper, Wayne Thiebaud, Rich- ard Diebenkorn, Armin Hansen, E. Charlton Fortune, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Fairfield Porter? Probably something of a Frankenstein’s monster. But if the above influences were channeled through a sensitive artist with his or her own vision, the result might be something like the work of San Francisco oil painter Bruce Katz.