Norm “Nomzee” Maxwell was a visual artist whose education came via the streets (Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) and the Hussian School Of Art. His combination of urban upbringing and fine art training resulted stylistically in an esoteric combination of color, light, and subject matter. Culturally, Maxwell was a quintessential urban contemporary artist, with a portfolio that included graffiti, street wear design, club flyer and album art, graphic design, set design, and fine art painting.

Born in Philadelphia, PA on January 25, 1969, Maxwell was fully susceptible to and influenced by street life, finding his expression in writing graffiti in the 1980s as “Ice”. Mentors and peers encouraged him to pursue an art degree, and his career began in Los Angeles’ Skid Row in the early 1990s alongside urban art visionary Doze Green and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Clarence Williams.

Like many burgeoning urban artists, Maxwell survived and flourished in San Francisco, then back to LA, by taking on a plethora of art and design jobs, including art directing multiple big-budget music videos under Hype Williams. In 2007, he focused his energy back to fine art and opened Norm Maxwell Studio Gallery, which spanned six years and three locations. Maxwell garnered commissions from patrons in Los Angeles, Paris, Seoul, Berlin, and Dubai.

Maxwell was a prolific artist whose skills and subject matter spanned the extremes of painting. From acrylic spray to oil brush, street life to ancient myth, and urban strife to family life, Maxwell addressed both the evil and beauty of humanity -- a duality that he personally struggled with during his short and magnificent life. He is survived by his wife and two children.

Quintessential features signature paintings by eighteen established and emerging urban contemporary painters.

Panoptic Beauty showcases the ability of the three artists to scale their work from small drawings on paper to gigantic murals, all the while maintaining quality of line and use of color. Similarly, their unique styles present beautifully at any size. Amandalynn, Bunnie Reiss, and Ursula Young all began their art careers in San Francisco and have since exhibited and created murals all over the world.

Construct challenges traditional concepts of architecture, painting, and story telling. From Stokes’ visual interpretation of JG Ballard’s book The Drought, to Chen’s technology-inspired pixelated landscapes, to Reyes’ painted cut-outs collaged to create another painting, the pieces in this exhibition reinterpret the constructs we have learned.

Color Feels showcases Venegas' ongoing explorations in tone and dimension, including new works from his Lost Grid and Day Map series. He sees painting as a way to improvise and organize the "emotional data" in his mind. He assigns values to different tasks, events, and situations and translates them into overlapping shapes of varying sizes. These individual shapes build a unified piece that represents the balance of elements in his life, much in the way a large event has a broad effect on day-to-day life while smaller moments also leave a profound impression.

Immortal includes new and recent paintings by Monty Guy, showcasing various styles from his reinterpretation of classic sculpture to his ongoing series of tattooed children, artistic icons, and beyond. His latest work delves into experimental techniques in brushwork and color theory.

The Affordable Art Series is a thorough exploration of the flourishing local art community, offering avid collectors and interested newbies a peek at the current mindset in urban painting.

Despite the fact both Anthony Holdsworth and Beryl Landau have exhibited work for decades, The Changing Cityscape will be their very first dual show featuring San Francisco landscapes. Their styles present an interesting contrast in approach to a similar subject matter: the constantly evolving San Francisco skyline and neighborhoods.

While Holdsworth paints plein air, Landau works from photographs that she has taken. Holdsworth uses oil while Landau prefers acrylic. And Holdsworth attempts to capture the vibe of a particular place -- Landau evokes a feeling about it. The couple met in 1980 during an SFAI alumni show at SOMArts Gallery, when both were more evidently influenced by Bay Area Figurative Art. Through time and experience, they have each developed a signature style.

Year Of The Dog features 100 original drawings by UK-born, Northern California-based Gillette, who created the series over the course of a year and is now, aptly, exhibiting them at the beginning of the Chinese Year Of The Dog.

The idea began when Gillette found a box of vintage dog greeting cards at a local Goodwill. He drew over the top of them as an act of continuation/vandalism and found it tremendously enjoyable. He decided to draw his own dogs, and had Electric Works print batches of them with archival ink for his eventual series. Evolving organically, his drawings portray musical icons, youth subcultures, religious figures, and more.

Invisible Places explores two artistic directions that Ording has pursued in her body of work. First is her signature line work, which she evolves with the use of brighter hues as well as color washes over coffee-dyed paper. Ording’s other series focuses on abstract landscapes, which render dreamy ethereal places that may not really exist. With these latest pieces, she explores weather and movement.