Chester Arnold infuses depths of feeling in crashing waves, cavernous ravines, and 400-year-old oak trees. His expressive oil paintings and drawings often depict psychologically and emotionally rich landscapes, and he writes that his work “reflects a mind’s natural and unrestrained adventures with friction and gravity at its core.
In 2022, the artist was the subject of an extensive survey exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum, California titled Reports to the Contrary: A Persistent Vision - Paintings 1971 - 2021 by Chester Arnold. In March 2018, Arnold’s work was featured in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the Academy of Arts and Letters Gallery in New York, NY, and was honored with an award through the Art Purchase Program.
In 2022, Kelly’s Cove Press published The Daily Feast, a monograph of paintings in collaboration with poet Bart Schneider. In 2017, Kelly’s Cove Press again published a monograph of Arnold’s work titled Evidence: Painting by Chester Arnold 1989 – 2017. In 2010, the Nevada Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition, On Earth as It Is in Heaven, with an accompanying catalogue. Additional solo exhibitions include the American University Museum, Katzen Art Center, Washington, D.C.; and the Sonoma County Museum, California. In 2008, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art highlighted Arnold and other recipients of the 2005 Eureka Fellowship.
In December 2019, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired Beyond This (2018), a major painting from Arnold’s 2018 exhibition Borderline. Arnold’s work is represented in multiple public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, the Tacoma Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Art.
Arnold lives in Sonoma, California, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2003.