Along with providing a wonderful venue for local creative talent through his Santa Rosa Art Center, Simmon Factor is himself also a prolific artist. His paintings tend to have a collage quality, with evocative elements – a walkway leading to a temple, a pregnant woman – layered onto a loosely geometric natural setting. Simmon begins with a conceptual sketch and then gives his instincts full rein, allowing the expressive shapes, vivid colors and nuanced textures to assemble themselves organically into finished compositions that have a fresh, unexpected, and often uplifting character. – BE
