This just in, from Neville Throckmorton, CEO of FireCode, Inc., Sacramento, CA: "Hi, I wanted you guys to know how excited I am about the ... drawing workshop. I had a great breakthrough after using E.J.'s Draw Good Now workbook for only a few days. I suddenly was able to see the outline of an image in the doodling and the figure came to life as I gave it volume by creating the various planes with shading as we were shown. I've never been able to draw at all. Last night I discovered how similar drawing is to sculpting as I "carved into" the paper with my pencil, creating a three dimensional relief. This is one of the most powerful exercises I've seen. Thanks E.J.!"

Folks from all over are coming in for a week or two of art classes with Mr. Gold. It was "an incredible, energy-charged, fun adventure," said Tom Schoeller of Nelson, British Columbia, of his 17 day visit. "This was a fantastic opportunity to work under unique conditions created for us by E.J. Would not have missed it for anything."

E.J. Gold's Watercolor Class shows off its work.

Besides being formally schooled at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California, where he later went on to teach, Instructor E.J. Gold has the distinction of having been trained by, or having worked with, some of the most well-known artists of this century, including Jackson Pollack, Bentley Schaad, Willem deKooning, Rico LeBrun, Charles White III and Franz Kline, to name a few. He had his first exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York at the tender age of four years through the Children's Art Carnival program, where such luminaries as Matisse and Picasso made presentations to the young students. Gold studied and later went on to teach at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

The son of H.L. Gold, editor of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, Gold grew up surrounded by artists and intellectuals, the "who's who" in the arts in America of the 40s and 50s: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein; Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Pete Seeger, Jose Ferrar and numerous others.

Jazz Artist E.J. Gold painting monumental-sized canvases for the International Association for Jazz Education Conference in New York City, 2007.

In the early 60s, Gold earned national recognition for his invention of soft, breathing sculpture, which was exhibited in both Los Angeles, California, and in Houston, Texas. L.A.'s legendary Robert Comara and Joan Ankrum Galleries exhibited his work in the 60s. Reunited with Gold in 1987, Ankrum still remembered him as "the one whose paintings all sold." Since that time, Gold's work has been exhibited in hundreds of one-man and group shows in galleries and museums throughout the US and Canada, as well as in Mexico, Puerto Rico, San Salvador, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the former USSR, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India.

Gold's theatrical JazzArt ® backdrops have appeared with an ever-increasing list of jazz greats including Wynton Marsalis, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Marion McPartland, Toots Thielemans, Roberta Gambarini, Nancy Wilson, Howard Johnson, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Chico Hamilton, Dave Brubeck, Ian Dogole & Hemispheres, Paul McCandless and many others.

Gold's JazzArt® has appeared in venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center; the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) Conferences in Toronto, New York City and Long Beach; the New School University Department of Jazz & Contemporary Music; the B.B. King Blues Club; the Jazz School Berkeley; Claremont Forum; Betty Hoover's Jazz @ the "A" Frame; the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); Mill Valley Jazz! -- California; Gallery Arcturus, Toronto; the sets of TV's Sister Sister and I Married a Princess; Northern California's Music in the Mountains; Houston's Museum of Modernism; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles and many others.

Jazz Artist E.J. Gold gives instruction in Watercolor, Drawing & Charcoal at Grass Valley's Ben Franklin Crafts.

Gold has been the official artist of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), where his monumental panels dressed the stages in Toronto in 2008. His work is in the Smithsonian: his portrait of Herbie Hancock is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History. He joined Zoe Alowan, S.L. Boyd, Kelly Rivera, Douglass-Truth and other artists in a Group Show to celebrate the Grand Opening of San Francisco's Jazz Heritage Center with Yoshi's Jazz Club in the Fillmore District of San Francisco; and was the headliner in the "Cool City ... Hot Jazz" exhibit there. The Jazz Heritage Center continues to exhibit Gold's JazzArt.

Asked why he's doing these classes, Gold stated: "It's to honor the memory of the great teachers who taught me and to pay back by passing what I learned on to others, so their contributions to the art world will live on."

For more information about the artist and his work, click here or call 530-271-2239.