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"When we got here, our first house was a little rental on Prospect Place down on Coast Walk. I was in the water at least twice a day." "I was a hippie chick. I birthed both my girls at home, the first one while we still lived on Prospect." at is Mark Holmes and his wife, Lisa Albert, both fine artists, talking about the early 1990s, soon after they moved to La Jolla from Dallas. At that time, Dallas had a growing list of celebrity millionaires who were personalizing their homes with murals and other decorative arts in the manner of 17th and 18th century nobility. "Lisa had a mentor who was a French muralist. I studied with an Italian master. Together, we cover an enormous range," says Holmes, who also studied business and notes that the two have never been starving artists. "It was a joint client who introduced us," says Albert. "I asked Lisa if she'd like to go to dinner within the first half hour," Holmes adds. The couple, whose two daughters are now 26 and 30, has been together ever since. In terms of making the move from Texas, Holmes recalls a vacation his family took to San Diego when he was ten years old. "at's when I decided I was going to live in Southern California, and not long after meeting Lisa I said, 'I'm leaving town. You want to go to La Jolla?'" he recalls. Albert replied, "Let's do it." ey made the move in 1991, and Albert & Holmes, as their award-winning business is known, has had a remarkable three-decade run, creating fine art and custom interiors for local and international luminaries including Mitt Romney. Well known in the design community, their work ranges from simple wall glazing to complex painted patterns and murals. But much of that is now in the past. ough Albert & Holmes continues to take on color consultations and fine art commissions, the couple no longer employs a studio of artists and craftsmen. For the past year, they have devoted themselves to their first love: painting. Holmes is a master when it comes to landscapes, while Albert is equally gifted with the abstract. is past June they held their first joint show at their home in La Jolla, bringing in more than 150 viewers and selling close to 20 works between them. "We thought if not now, when?" says Albert, who some years ago suffered a medical scare during which she remembers thinking, "I never got to paint that painting." Although their styles are vastly different, both Holmes and Albert work to express something true about life in their paintings. Inspired by California's plein air tradition, as well as the European Impressionists who left their studios to paint outdoors, Holmes has set up his easel everywhere from the Sierras to the Tetons to the Rockies. "Nature is never fully at rest," he explains. "at moment when the sun is bouncing off a particular ridge in a particular way has already passed. I want to capture those moments to remind the viewer of the magic." "He's a romantic," says Albert, whose artistic background is three generations in the making, including both her mother and grandmother, who left Russia for Paris and painted scarves for the likes of Christian Dior. "I sometimes feel as if I'm channeling my grandmother's work from the 1920s and '30s," says Albert, whose geometric paintings tell a complex story of balance, tension, and harmony. "Every shape has a place in the whole." Together, Albert and Holmes have created a place of beauty, with art the focal point of both their work and their lives as a whole. albertandholmes.com, lisaalbertfineart.com, markholmesfineart.com @ranchandcoast RANCH & COAST MAGAZINE AUGUST 2024 83