FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church celebrates the 75th Anniversary of its sanctuary dedication with a fundraising event,
gathering of civic leaders, and the unveiling of a new large-scale painting by local artist Elizabeth Barlow

Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA – All Saints’ Episcopal Church will mark the 75th anniversary of the dedication of its sanctuary with a special anniversary celebration on July 26, 2026, which will launch a fundraising campaign for a new roof and other improvements at the historic Carmel-by-the-Sea church. The celebration will also feature the unveiling of a new large-scale painting commissioned from local artist Elizabeth Barlow.

On the heels of the annual Carmel Bach Festival, the July 26th celebration will gather parishioners, civic leaders, and members of the broader Carmel community to honor the church’s history and its continuing commitment to service and the arts. The event will also launch a fundraising campaign supporting important capital improvements at All Saints’, including the installation of a new roof to help preserve the historic sanctuary for generations to come.

All Saints’ has long celebrated the arts as an essential part of its spiritual and communal life. The church regularly hosts musical performances and serves as a key venue during the annual Carmel Bach Festival, which takes place during July and draws visitors from around the world. During this year’s festival, local artist Elizabeth Barlow’s painting will already be installed in the sanctuary but remain veiled, offering a glimpse of what is to come ahead of the official unveiling at the anniversary celebration. The painting joins a legacy of significant artworks within the church, including a celebrated stained-glass window by artist Mark Adams.

Known for her contemporary still-life paintings exploring the symbolic nature of flowers, Barlow’s work emphasizes themes of rebirth, strength found within fragility, and the power of re-emergence that lies within all living things. Though hyperreal and representational, her oil paintings also act as an extension of her meditative process, forming sites of contemplation and renewal. With this new painting, Barlow deepens these explorations within the context of the local community and environment.

Titled Transfiguration, the painting depicts white calla lilies, trumpet-shaped perennials that are a beloved signature of the All Saints’ garden, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The flowers serve as enduring symbols of hope, transformation, and resilience, while also reflecting the natural beauty that surrounds the church itself.

The 8-by-5-foot painting will be installed in the nave of the church above the sanctuary door. All Saints’ Episcopal Church was designed by mid-century modernist architect Robert R. Jones in 1951, blending the simple, sleek design of modernism with the stone and wood traditions of the Second Bay Tradition to create a structure both expansive in space and grounded in local materials such as redwood and Carmel stone. Barlow’s painting likewise bridges contemporary sensibilities with the enduring beauty of the natural world.

Elizabeth Barlow. Photo: Rick Pharaoh

Details

75th Anniversary Celebration Party
July 26, 2026, 3pm 

Blessing of the Church by Rector Amber Sturgess
Remarks about the Church’s history and roots/relevance in the community
Unveiling of the painting
Reception and party to follow

About All Saints’ Episcopal Church 

All Saints’ Episcopal Church traces its origins to 1910. In 1912 a permanent location was built on Monte Verde Street in downtown Carmel.  A new church building was dedicated in 1951 (the original church site on Monte Verde is now home to Carmel City Hall).  The contemporary structure features a native redwood interior with soaring beams and other local Carmel materials.

All Saints’ Carmel aspires to be a grateful and loving community centered on spiritual transformation in Christ. God calls us to seek wisdom with open minds and hearts, trusting that the Spirit will lead us to selfless contemplation and action.

About Elizabeth Barlow

Elizabeth Barlow grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a house filled with art and surrounded by flower gardens. Her father was the late artist Philip Barlow, and after a detour in the performing arts, she followed his inspiration back to painting. Barlow earned her BA at the University of Utah, and Masters’ Degree from the University of Virginia. After some years living abroad, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she continued her arts education at UC Berkeley Extension. There she studied drawing and painting with Donald Bradford and others, earning a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate with Distinction in Visual Arts. In 2007 she studied in New York City at the Art Students League.

A contemporary still-life artist, Barlow follows a time-honored practice. She begins by making a pencil sketch of her subject on an oil-primed, custom-made linen support. She follows this with an alla prima (initial wet on wet) layer of oil paint in color. Multiple glazed layers follow, a meticulous and time-consuming process that results in works of luminosity and depth. To develop her composition she takes hundreds of photographs to use as her references, later combining them to realize the vision she is after.

In her San Francisco studio, Barlow devised an innovative approach to portraiture, her favorite genre of painting. In collaboration with her subjects, she composed arrangements of their most meaningful possessions. She documented personal items such as jewelry, favorite clothing, books, and a variety of precious keepsakes. With an intimacy more characteristic of ordinary portraiture, these still lifes exhibit a powerful presence. Although she no longer creates them, the Portraits in Absentia series was well-received and exhibited often.

With her move to the Monterey Peninsula in 2016, Barlow’s work underwent a transformation. Finding herself immersed in sea air and surrounded by forests and year-round flowers, she was inspired to take nature as her subject. In response to a commission, Barlow began to paint flowers, which led to her current series, Flora Portraits. She sees flowers as potent symbols of life force, of strength within fragility, and of the power of re-emergence that lies within all living things. With the support of her daily meditation practice, she believes that painting flowers is a transformative practice that allows her to slow down, look deeply, and develop a deep reverence for all living things.

Elizabeth Barlow is represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, CA. Her work is held in public and corporate collections including the Monterey Museum of Art; San Francisco Opera, San Francisco, CA; the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; The Absinthe Group, San Francisco, CA; and the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Monterey, CA. She gains inspiration from artists Georgia O’Keeffe, Martha Alf, Johannes Vermeer, Claudio Bravo, and David Ligare, but her father Philip Barlow remains her most revered teacher and principal artistic influence. In 2023, her work was featured in the exhibition Flora Fauna at the Monterey Museum of Art.

Website: https://www.elizabethbarlowart.com 
Instagram: @elizabethbarlowart