SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – For Chris and Dawnel De Rubeis, owning a gallery in a place like Lake Tahoe was more than just a business venture – it was an escape to a realm filled with inspiration, a beautiful get-away. 

Chris De Rubeis has been an artist for many years and has been sharpening his skills through an art form he created called Abstract Sensualism® with many of his pieces using light as an interactive element. De Rubeis paints on metal, and there’s an ethereal and visually-stunning quality to his art.

“He etches into the metal, and he’ll paint on top of it. What’s beautiful and unique about his artwork is he’ll even light them on fire, and they’ll change from the morning to evening light in your home,” said Megan Uthe, Gallery Director at De Rubeis Collective. “It’s not stagnant art  – it’s living art.”

De Rubeis was featured in another art gallery in Tahoe many years ago, and “he fell in love with the amount of inspiration that was here, from the lake to the mountains,” said his wife, Dawnel De Rubeis. “We love small, quaint towns, which is very much Tahoe.” 

Their family-owned art gallery in South Lake Tahoe is now nearing its first year being open and has acquired some stunning and vastly unique styles of art including Lake Tahoe-inspired works by Patrick Guyton.

“[Guyton] actually honed in on two different styles of painting, where it’s an 18th century and a 14th century style and combined the two to create a new art form,” said Uthe. The new art form was coined Gilded Modernism®. “He’ll lay down the silver or the copper leafing and paint on top of it, sometimes even varnishing the metal.” 

Before Guyton began his journey to create Gilded Modernism®, he studied fine arts, sculpture and design theory at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Eventually, he went on to become a background artist for Chuck Jones, animator, painter and filmmaker who along with his career at Warner Bros., created popular cartoon characters including Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Road Runner and more. 

“I was his last background artist, and I also painted his animation cels,” Guyton told the Tribune. In addition, Guyton worked with Chuck Jones’s right-hand man and background artist, Maurice Noble. Noble was an animation production designer who created the stunning background art for Disney’s iconic classics, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Bambi”, and “Dumbo”. 

“They sent me up to work with him because he wasn’t able to do the cels. His hands were in bad condition, so he basically just told me how to do what he would do,” Guyton recalled. “I got this crash course with this monster of animation.”

Guyton touched on the essence of being a “background guy”, noting that every person who has seen those beloved Disney animations has seen Noble’s work but had no inclination of his name or who he was. Among the practices he learned from Noble, Guyton retained Noble’s use of a space such as background, foreground and midground, in addition to the emotion Noble would put into his work. 

After Jones and Noble passed away, Guyton hit a dead end in his animation career, and he found himself reverting back to his roots. His years of experience as a sign painter led him to mastering the art of leafing or gilding, a method of applying very thin sheets of metal, such as copper and gold, to surfaces. 

“We’d do fire trucks and bank windows, and it was a big part of the sign industry. So I took that part of it and then thought ‘Well what about doing paintings on leafing? Actually painting on leafing itself.'”

Guyton now creates artwork blending traditional fine art with his experience in animation and his skills doing leafing while using techniques like burnishing to produce an ambient glow. 

He continues to push limits, finding inspiration while traveling to different places and experiencing new cultures.

“To be able to just continue painting is the biggest thing for me,” Guyton said. “Hopefully that doesn’t end. I’ll do it as long as the good Lord has me doing it.” 

The De Rubeis Fine Art Gallery in South Lake Tahoe is now home to many of Guyton’s pieces as well as artwork spanning from more than nine artists and counting, many of whom encapsulate the natural beauty Lake Tahoe has to offer. 

“What we hope is that people get to see artwork like they’ve never seen before, and it’s something they want to enjoy everyday and they can almost “Mary Poppins” into the painting after a long day at work. Let the artwork make the presence for the space,” said Uthe.  

Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days, Uthe encourages folks to come in and take a look around. Along with purchasing work from their collection, payment plan options are also available for those interested in collecting a piece they really love. 

Their next art show, scheduled for July, will feature brand new work from Chris De Rubeis. More details to come. 

De Rubeis Collective Fine Art Gallery is located at 4125 Lake Tahoe Blvd, suite B, in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.