ENCINITAS, CA — (May 26, 2009) — Art lovers and their families are invited to Lux Art Institute’s Free Saturday on June 6. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., guests will enjoy an open house with free admission, studio tours and refreshments, and from 12 to 4 p.m., live music by North County-based indie-pop singers Joanie Mendenhall and Alexis Allan.

The afternoon will give visitors a chance to meet Scottish painter Derrick Guild. During his residency, Guild will create a large-scale “label painting” based on a work of 17th-century Spanish master Diego Velázquez, famous for his portraits of royals in the court of King Philip VI.

Lux Liaisons will guide tours through the studio and Guild’s exhibition of hyper-realistic oil paintings and objects, which reference European still life of the 15th to 19th centuries.

Lux, San Diego’s interactive art destination, is dedicated to encouraging children’s artistic curiosity through Luxcursion (classroom fieldtrips to Lux,) the Valise Project, (portable museums presented to schools throughout San Diego,) Summer Art Camp, and Free Saturday.

Lux Art Institute is located at 1550 South El Camino Real in Encinitas. Parking for Free Saturday is in the Sanderling-Waldorf School parking lot and in posted parking zones along El Camino Real.

Lux hours are Thursday and Friday, 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; cost is $10 for two visits. For more information visit www.luxartinstitute.org or call 760.436.6611.

About Derrick Guild

Derrick Guild’s “label paintings” play with the tradition of trompe l’oeil, a form in which the painter renders an object so precisely that it literally “tricks the eye” of the viewer. This style flourished in the Renaissance and enabled artists to render things with “eye-fooling exactitude.”

Guild’s “label paintings” go a step further by serving as a personal commentary on society’s need to categorize, order and pigeonhole. By painting the image of a person (in Guild’s case, the figures from Velázquez’s court paintings, the highest strata of Spanish society at the time) in the very structured manner of a grid—within the dimensions of painted tags, or labels—a “cage” formation is created and the incorporated image is then held within this cage. The result is a portrait that denotes a sense of limitation and restriction imposed by society’s definitions of status and class.

Guild also works in the ongoing tradition of the “kitchen still life,” a genre practiced by European masters of the 15th to 19th centuries. His paintings and objects characterize Guild’s fascination with the appearance of things and his desire to represent them with detail and clarity. By juxtaposing objects or presenting them individually, Guild references ideas of love, loss, religion, beauty, geo-politics, humor, longing, death, absurdity, and decay.

Guild received a BA degree and his Post Graduate Diploma from Duncan of Jordanston College of Art and Design, Dundee, where he has taught since 1992. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States, including: “Sense is Hard” at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 1999; “Picnic Hamper for Heaven” at Perth Museum, Scotland, 2007; and “Bread Paintings,” 2000 and “Pre-Ascension,” 2007 at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York City.

He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Maude Gemmell Hutchison Award RSA, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award, and the Villiers David Foundation Award.

Guild is in-studio May 28 – June 20. His completed work will be on view at Lux through August 1.

About Lux Art Institute

Lux Art Institute, located in Encinitas, Calif., opened its doors to the public in November 2007 and is redefining the museum experience with its unique artist-in-residence program. At Lux, artists live and work on site, while producing a commissioned work of art.

Throughout the year, Lux invites significant regional, national, and international artists to participate in the Lux residency and encourages visitors from across the country to observe and engage them. This one-of-a-kind institution invites visitors to not only “see art,” but also to “see art happen.”

Slated to be the first “green” (LEED certified) art museum in California and located alongside one of Southern California’s few remaining coastal wetlands, Lux’s five-acre site overlooks the San Elijo Lagoon and is surrounded by a wildlife preserve that stretches to the Pacific Ocean.

Santa Monica, California-based Renzo Zecchetto, AIA, designed the two-story building, a recent recipient of the San Diego Architectural Foundation’s top design award.