Galleries — A Journey Into the Soul of the Artist
Marin County has the perfect storm of elements to create a thriving artist community: a base of affluent and educated patrons who naturally want to support the arts, and a physical environment of breathtaking beauty that provides endless creative inspiration. Not surprisingly, Marin has developed one of the richest cultures of artists and artistic creation anywhere in California.
Art is an internal process of the human mind that manifests in the real world as the creations of the artist. When you stand before a work of art, you are taken inside someone else's mind on a journey that reveals how similarly — and yet how differently — each of us perceives the universe. We can usually relate to an artist's work in some way while simultaneously marveling at their unique vision of a reality that may ultimately be very different from our own.
"An Art Gallery, unlike an Art Museum, is quite often a place where an artist's creations are offered for sale — thereby offering the public a rare and wonderful opportunity to become patrons of their favorite artists. This opportunity enriches the patron's world by allowing them to fill their homes with works of art that speak to them personally. And sometimes we know that an art object speaks to us without knowing exactly why. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and art remains one of the most compelling and ultimately mysterious concepts in human experience — sometimes completely eluding our ability to describe why we are drawn to it."
"Art with a Marin County flavor is a special thing — it carries the light of the bay, the green of the hills, the wildness of the Pacific coast. To own a piece of Marin art is to carry a piece of this place with you wherever you go."
Fine Art Galleries — Where Art Is Acquired
These are Marin County's established commercial galleries — places with regular hours, serious collections, and a genuine commitment to connecting collectors with original fine art. Sausalito, with its long tradition as an artists' enclave, is the undisputed center of gallery culture in Marin.
Sausalito
One of Sausalito's most beloved and enduring galleries, Galerie Elektra has occupied a prime location in the historic Princess Theater building on Bridgeway for over 25 years. The gallery specializes in original oil paintings from artists around the world, with a particular strength in works that are accessible to new collectors — original art priced from $500 to $10,000.
What truly distinguishes Galerie Elektra is its owner Elektra herself, who is renowned for her personal and unhurried approach to each visitor. She will take significant time to walk you through the collection, discuss artists and their processes, and — refreshingly — actively cautions against same-day decisions. A gallery that genuinely puts the art and the collector first.
A cornerstone of Sausalito's gallery scene for over thirty years, Hanson Gallery Fine Art is located in a beautifully converted historic theater space on Bridgeway. The gallery features work by both emerging and established artists in a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere that draws a broad mix of serious collectors and first-time buyers.
The gallery's eclectic collection of largely international contemporary artists — many of whom now live in the Bay Area — is presented without pressure in a space where the art and the conversation about it take center stage. An enjoyable and often surprising gallery experience.
Completely unique among Marin County galleries, the Scrimshaw Gallery is dedicated exclusively to nautical art in all its forms — scrimshaw (the centuries-old art of engraving on whale bone or ivory), nautical paintings and prints, maritime sculpture, finely crafted knives, and collectibles with a seafaring theme.
Given Sausalito's deep maritime heritage — its houseboat community, its World War II shipyard history, its position at the edge of San Francisco Bay — there is no more fitting gallery in the county. A genuinely one-of-a-kind experience that connects the art of the sea to the place that lives beside it.
Daniel Merriam is one of the most internationally recognized surrealist painters working today, and he chose Sausalito as his home — transforming not just a gallery storefront but an entire building on Bridgeway into a showcase for his extraordinary dreamlike paintings. His work blends meticulous technical mastery with richly imaginative fantasy worlds that have earned him collectors across the globe.
Visiting Bubble Street Gallery is an immersive experience unlike any other gallery in Marin — you step into Merriam's visual universe and emerge having seen something genuinely singular. One of Sausalito's most memorable destinations.
Meili Zhao's gallery presents her vibrant original landscapes and watercolors — works that bring the luminous light and sweeping scenery of the Bay Area and Marin County to canvas in a style that is both technically accomplished and deeply personal. Her paintings capture the particular quality of Northern California light in ways that resonate especially with people who know and love this landscape.
A gallery run by the artist herself, offering a direct and personal connection between creator and collector that is increasingly rare in the commercial art world.
The Paint Art Collective is a nonprofit organization promoting the work of artists with disabilities — and doing so from a beautiful gallery space in the heart of Sausalito. The gallery presents original work that is remarkable not despite its origins but because of the determination, creativity, and vision that brings it into being.
Supporting the Paint Art Collective as a patron or visitor is one of the most meaningful art purchases you can make in Marin County. Art that matters in every sense of the word.
A uniquely fascinating gallery focused exclusively on historic photography from the worlds of news, sports, and entertainment. If you have ever wanted to own a piece of photographic history — an original news photograph from a landmark moment, a classic sports image, or an iconic portrait of a Hollywood legend — Mark Reuben Gallery is your destination.
The collection spans decades of American and world history captured on film, and browsing the gallery is a journey through cultural memory as much as a gallery visit. Genuinely one of a kind in the Bay Area.
Bacchus and Venus is a clever and thoroughly enjoyable concept: a wine tasting room combined with an art gallery, appealing simultaneously to two of your senses. Browse original artworks while tasting wines from California and beyond — an experience that feels distinctly and pleasurably Marin.
It is the kind of establishment that could only exist in Sausalito, where the culture of fine wine and fine art have long been intertwined in the lifestyle of the community. A wonderful stop on any Sausalito gallery day.
Mill Valley & Central Marin
Upstart Modern operates on a distinctive hybrid model: a private gallery space in Sausalito combined with residential and corporate art consulting services operating nationwide. Whether a client is looking for a single statement piece for a special location, curating an entire home, or furnishing a corporate environment, Upstart Modern's team works directly with artists — local, national, and international — to find the right fit.
For Marin visitors who are also homeowners or business owners thinking about art beyond a gallery visit, Upstart Modern offers a sophisticated and personalized pathway to building a meaningful collection.
Art Works Downtown is San Rafael's nonprofit arts hub, located in the heart of downtown and presenting a consistently engaging lineup of rotating exhibitions featuring Bay Area artists working across all media. The gallery is part of San Rafael's broader identity as one of the most arts-vibrant mid-sized cities in the United States — ranked #3 nationally in 2024 by Americans for the Arts.
Art Works Downtown also serves as a community gathering point for San Rafael's creative community, hosting openings, artist talks, and events throughout the year.
Set inside a magnificent 17-room Queen Anne Victorian mansion built in 1888 — the former home of shipping magnate Robert Dollar, purchased by the community in 1974 — Falkirk Cultural Center presents contemporary art installations and exhibitions in one of the most atmospheric settings imaginable. The elegant historic architecture provides a beautiful counterpoint to the contemporary works it houses.
Falkirk hosts installations by Bay Area artists working with space, light, and texture in ways that respond to the building's remarkable character. An experience that is as much about the setting as the art.
West Marin & The Coast
The Image Flow is Marin County's premier photography gallery and fine art printing lab, located in San Anselmo. The gallery presents rotating exhibitions of photography across a wide thematic range — from social documentary and fine art portraiture to landscape and street photography — and serves as a hub for the significant community of serious photographers that Marin County has always attracted.
The combination of gallery, darkroom, and digital printing lab makes the Image Flow a complete resource for photographers at every level, while the exhibition program keeps it a genuinely compelling destination for photography lovers.
The gallery wing of the Bolinas Museum presents rotating exhibitions by Marin and Bay Area artists, with a particular focus on West Marin's coastal creative community. The work shown here tends to reflect the raw, wild, and deeply local character of Bolinas itself — a town that has deliberately resisted commercialization and attracted serious artists for decades because of it.
Located at 48 Wharf Road, the museum also has a history room packed with local memorabilia, a beautiful sheltered courtyard, and hosts art receptions, concerts, and an annual holiday showcase. Open Friday through Sunday.
Featured Annual Event
Marin Open Studios — 275 Artists Open Their Doors
Marin Open Studios is one of the most remarkable annual art events in all of Northern California — and one of the best-kept secrets outside of Marin County itself. Every May, over 275 local artists open their private studios to the public for two full weekends of self-guided tours. Sculptors, painters, photographers, potters, printmakers, textile artists, jewelers, and mixed media artists all participate — welcoming visitors into the actual spaces where their work is made.
The event begins with a Preview Gallery at the Sausalito Center for the Arts, where you can see one work from each of the 275 participating artists all in one place — an extraordinary survey of Marin's creative community. From there, a printed tour guide and mobile app help you plan a personalized route through studios scattered across the entire county. The event is completely free and open to the public.
For anyone interested in art — whether as a collector, a student, or simply a curious visitor — Marin Open Studios is an unmissable event. There is nothing quite like meeting an artist in their own workspace and understanding firsthand how a work comes into being.
Art Centers, Cooperatives & Studios
These are the places where art in Marin County is actually made — communities of working artists, educational centers, and creative hubs where the process of creation is as visible and accessible as the finished works themselves.
The Industrial Center Building is Sausalito's historic creative hub — a massive early 20th century industrial structure at 480 Gate Five Road that has evolved into one of the Bay Area's most vibrant communities of working artists. The building houses dozens of artist studios alongside galleries, creative businesses, and the ICB Artists Association, whose Gallery 111 presents works by resident artists.
ICB Open Studios events bring the public directly into working studios throughout the building — one of the most authentic and immersive ways to experience the creative process in all of Marin County. The building's spacious industrial architecture provides an atmosphere that feels genuinely alive with creative energy.
Nestled on two acres at the base of Mount Tamalpais, the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts is one of Marin County's most beloved nonprofit art institutions — a community-focused center in the tradition of the great California artists' colonies of the early and mid 20th century. The center offers studio space, exhibitions, classes, and community events that honor individual creativity and support artistic practice at every level.
The setting alone is extraordinary — the walk to O'Hanlon through the Mill Valley neighborhood is a delight, and arriving at this peaceful two-acre campus in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais feels like stepping into a different world. The gallery presents rotating group shows throughout the year, including the beloved annual "wabi-sabi" exhibit celebrating beauty in imperfection.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2022, the Marin Art and Garden Center is one of Marin County's most treasured community institutions. Founded in 1945 on land that was once part of a Mexican land grant, the 11-acre campus in the beautiful town of Ross combines spectacular certified-green gardens with art programming, educational events, theater, and community gatherings.
The campus originally envisioned as "a self-supporting colony of artists and crafts persons creating and selling their wares within a park-like setting" — and that vision still animates the place today. Open daily from dawn to dusk, with gardens free to the public. The Barn Theater is home to the Ross Valley Players, one of Marin's beloved community theater companies.
The Marin Society of Artists is one of the Bay Area's oldest and most active artist membership organizations, with over 200 member artists working across all media. Based in San Rafael, the MSA maintains a gallery showcasing member artwork and hosts exhibitions, workshops, and community events that serve both practicing artists and the broader public.
For visitors interested in connecting directly with the working artistic community of Marin County, the Marin Society of Artists offers one of the best entry points — a broad cross-section of styles, media, and artistic approaches all connected to this remarkable place.
Housed in the historic buildings of the former Hamilton Army Air Force Base, the Novato Arts Center at Hamilton Field is a thriving creative community that brings together over forty working artists in three buildings, alongside the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MarinMOCA), a museum store, and dedicated classroom space for art education.
The center hosts First Sunday Open Studios every month, welcoming visitors into working artist studios in an exceptionally atmospheric setting — the historic Art Deco military architecture of Hamilton Field providing a striking backdrop for contemporary creative work. A fascinating destination for anyone interested in both Marin's art scene and its military history.
Established in 1997, the Point Reyes Open Studios Group promotes the work of artists living around Tomales Bay and the wider Point Reyes area. On any weekend, PROS hosts local exhibits featuring the area's finest sculptors, photographers, potters, painters, printmakers, and woodworkers — and visitors can meet the artists, see original work, and watch live demonstrations of complex craft techniques.
The experience is entirely self-guided, allowing visitors to meander at their own pace through studios surrounded by gardens and sweeping views of Tomales Bay. One of the most authentic and beautiful ways to experience West Marin's remarkable creative community.
Located just a block from the Sausalito ferry pier, the Sausalito Center for the Arts serves as the official home of the annual Marin Open Studios Preview Gallery — where all 275 Open Studios artists are represented in one place each spring. Year-round, the center presents rotating exhibitions including the celebrated annual "Paint Sausalito" plein air show each August, which draws artists from across the Bay Area to paint Sausalito's iconic scenery on location.
The center is the heartbeat of Sausalito's art community — a welcoming, community-focused space that has been connecting art lovers with local artists for years. Easy to reach by ferry from San Francisco.
A Flavor of Marin's Artists
Marin County has been home to, and inspired, an extraordinary range of artists across every medium. Here is a sampling of the talent — historic and contemporary — that has called this remarkable county home. We cannot show their work, but we can describe the artist and the art, and invite you to seek them out.
One of the world's most recognized surrealist painters, Daniel Merriam creates extraordinarily detailed fantasy worlds populated by fantastical architecture, impossible landscapes, and dreamlike figures rendered with meticulous technical mastery. His paintings feel simultaneously like fairy tales and architectural blueprints — worlds you want to step into and explore.
Originally from the East Coast, Merriam chose Sausalito as his home and transformed a building on Bridgeway into his Bubble Street Gallery, where the full scope of his imagination is on permanent display.
Tom Killion is one of Marin County's most celebrated artists — a woodblock printmaker whose stunning images of the California wilderness, particularly Mount Tamalpais and the Marin coastline, have defined how many people see and feel this landscape. Working in the tradition of Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking, his images combine precise observation of nature with an extraordinary sense of color and mood.
Killion is also a history professor, author, and longtime supporter of the Marin County Fair — a genuine polymath who embodies the creative and intellectual richness that Marin County produces.
Jack Wisby (1869–1940) was one of the first major artists to paint Marin County's landscape in depth — an immigrant from England who arrived in San Francisco in 1892 and fell in love with Marin's rolling hills, forests, and coastline. He and his artist wife built a home in Bolinas in 1915 with sweeping views that became frequent subjects of his paintings.
Wisby's work is both a pleasure to the eye and a fascinating historical window into how Marin County looked over a century ago — the hills and ranches and seaside cottages of a world that has substantially changed. His paintings are preserved and exhibited at the Bolinas Museum.
Meili Zhao paints vibrant landscapes and watercolors that capture the luminous, ever-changing quality of Northern California light — the way it falls on the hills and water of Marin County in ways that feel both familiar and miraculous. Her paintings have a joyful energy that reflects genuine love for the landscape she inhabits.
Zhao operates her own gallery in Sausalito at 22 El Portal, making her one of the relatively rare artists in Marin who presents and sells her work directly to the public from her own dedicated space — the most authentic form of gallery relationship possible.
Art Rogers is a celebrated West Marin documentary photographer whose images of Point Reyes and Tomales Bay community life have earned him wide recognition as one of California's most important photographic chroniclers of rural and coastal life. His photographs capture the authentic character of West Marin's people and landscape with warmth, precision, and deep human empathy.
Rogers is also widely known in the art world for a landmark legal case involving the appropriation of one of his photographs by artist Jeff Koons — a case that became a touchstone in American copyright law. A Marin Cultural Treasure Award recipient.