Richard Tette San Francisco Bay Area native Richard Tette was born in 1932. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he married and raised three children with his wife Pam. He also earned an arts education degree from the prestigious California College of Arts in Oakland, California, where he majored in advertising and illustration. Upon graduation he began his early career as a technical illustrator for Aerojet General in Sacramento, working on the Navy’s Polaris missile project. During this same period of time, Richard continued painting and exhibiting these fine art works in regional and national competitions. In May of 1972 Richard was named a prize-winning finalist by the American Federation of Arts for the Benedictine Art Awards Show in New York City. His exhibition list also includes the annual Society of Western Artists Show at the De Young Museum in San Francisco; Watercolor USA Show in Springfield, Missouri; California State Fair in Sacramento; Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History; Museum of Monterey; and numerous other juried shows. His paintings have also been curated to tour numerous Midwest universities and galleries. Richard Tette is the recipient of multiple awards for his iconic landscapes — described by one art reviewer as the “essence of serenity.” Richard names Andrew Wyeth and Ralph Borge as the greatest influences on his distinctive style and rural, “vanishing America” subjects. Despite living within two miles of the Pacific Ocean, he mostly turns his back to the sea to capture inland waterways, sloughs, creeks, and vernal pools, often including rustic barns and time-worn homes in these pastoral compositions. A long-time resident of Carmel Valley, Richard Tette was juried into the legendary Carmel Art Association as an Artist Member in 2007. Over the past seventeen years, the number of acquired artworks he has created has regularly led the Carmel Art Association’s annual list of top-selling artists.