An enthusiastic crowd showed up at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art Saturday afternoon for the opening of an exhibit by Bruce Lauritzen of Point Reyes Station.

Lauritzen’s idiosyncratic exhibition of paintings, which is titled the Vessel Series, consists of abstracted representations of boat hulls.

The artist discusses his painting Still Waters III with two guests at his opening.

The painting in the foreground is titled Boathouse. The three smaller paintings to its left are titled Towards Dark Water, RowBoat, and RowBoat II.

Lauritzen graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and earned a master-of-fine-arts degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. He later taught at the College of Marin and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He was also a member of the Marin Arts Council’s founding board of directors. Lauritzen’s work is in more than 100 private, institutional, and museum collections.

Lauritizen (left) with fellow Point Reyes Station artist Chuck Eckart during Saturday’s opening at the Marin Contemporary Art Museum on the old Hamilton Air Base.

The show can be seen from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays through July 13 at 500 Palm Drive.

Some history regarding the museum’s impressive home: It typifies the air base’s Spanish-Revival-style buildings, which were mostly constructed in 1934. Originally called Hamilton Airfield, the base is named for a World War I hero, 1st Lt. Lloyd Andrew Hamilton. In August 1918, Hamilton received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism after leading a low-level bombing attack on a German airdrome 30 miles behind enemy lines in Belgium. He died in action only 13 days later in France. The air base was decommissioned in 1974.