Pepper Tree Pattern

Roi George Partridge

Roi Partridge’s eye for detail did not end with printmaking. He often took photographs as studies that would inevitably end up works of art in their own right. Though married to noted photographer Imogene Cunningham, she would not teach him photography and he learned from friends Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Here, the California artist has found beauty in the rigid, narrow towers of California oil derricks on a Santa Barbara mesa as seen through the interlaced leaves of pepper trees - the convergence of nature with mankind’s desire and self created need for change.

Partridge’s documentation of this place would prove to be somewhat historic: Santa Barbara is synonymous with classic Mediterranean climate, weather, and architecture and is a major tourist destination. However, much of it was once an oil field, though it was short lived and peaked in 1935 before a steady decline. Once it was abandoned in the mid 1970s, the area was quickly purchased by developers and transformed into a residential neighborhood. Oil derricks platforms can still be found off the Santa Barbara coastline.