Matt Beard

Poppies and Pointbreaks

A tribute painting to the California poppies and coast painted on a surfboard

He’d laugh this little howling cackle that pulled you into his slipstream as you made your way along the path, down the makeshift rope, repelling into the cove below that you’d never seen breaking before and now was suddenly cracking it’s sonic water booms on the reef below. Everything made him laugh. And almost everything he laughed at led you to math, calculating the odds of survival. ⠀
⠀Some friendships are like this.⠀⠀He led me to a burning mountain.He led me to wildcats prowling in broad daylight.He led me to a cabin where I spent long evenings watching dragons in the heavens war against the winds on earth below while Jack Kerouac sat on the recliner by the lampstand fearing the dark.He led me to the psychic who knew more of me than I even know and probably still has all the secrets she summoned from between my words dried out and saved in glass jars for seasoning on vegan tacos for the next visitor she entertains.He led me to the Captain who loved her and didn’t speak much because she already knew his words anyway.He led me to high ridges with views in all directions.He led me to a trailer where a Stranger poured me a glass of bourbon and shared Her cigarettes in the dark. ⠀⠀Her name was California.⠀⠀She led me to fields of poppies glowing red with love for all and none.She led me to highways that carry hearts to heaven and hell.She led me to destinations even deeper still.She led me to kelp beds anchored to the skulls of conquered peoples.She led me to endless lines of barbed wire fences that scraped into my flesh and instead of bleeding the wounds poured out cheap wine and could only be bandaged with brown paper sacks.She led me to the top of the steeple of the first mission on her skin where the air was as thin as the plot in these verses and where the smoke has been rising since it was burned to the ground in 1775.She led me to her far north where the trees were once taller than any lie ever told.She led me to a path on the edge of a cliff following a friend as he laughed his way down the mountain. ⠀⠀And she led me home.⠀

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Ghosts of 1963: Salvador Dali, His Wife, The Witch, and an Absolute Bomb

While researching reference material for this studio work, I came across a photo of Salvador Dali and his wife, sitting on that boulder beside the dying snag of cypress in the center of the painting. Look close and you’ll see them.

A lot has changed since they sat there in 1963. The grass is gone, trampled by tourists revealing an even greater boneyard of white granite.

And the tourists. Oh my. I’m not knocking them, I’m one of them when I’m here, marveling at this wonder of nature. But when I tried to paint a small study here, just a few steps from that boulder, there were so many people there that as soon as I set up my gear to paint, I was surrounded by a crowd of onlookers asking questions, poking at my wet paint, smiling, nodding, taking photos, you name it. It was nuts.

I keep a pair of headphones in my gear for tuning out distractions in times like this. Even that wasn’t enough. They kept coming on, crowding around and asking questions that would sadly not be answered today. Out of survival, to create some mental space and focus, I did what I had to do. I started singing. Loudly, and badly. Punk rock songs from my youth on full blast, for the world to hear and withdraw from in embarrassment. It
worked. I had a great time that day.

Afterwards I hopped a fence to sit on that boulder and eat a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich while pondering whether Salvador Dali would have liked 80’s punk rock or not. I may never know, but I’ll ask him if I ever make it back to 1963.

And a painting like this deserves a poem as well I think…

Pay the toll⠀
A piece of your soul⠀
And leave it there as a sign⠀
A cardboard box⠀
Full of rocks and socks⠀
From which we will rise in their mind⠀
Extrapolated⠀
And captivated⠀
Forever to walk this lonely line⠀
They’ll see us standing⠀
Calling out in the night⠀
With bare feet wet from the brine⠀
They’ll slow to a stop⠀
They’ll wonder how⠀
The water and ethers combined⠀
If they listen we’ll say⠀
It was because we payed⠀
The guard at the gate to get by⠀
⠀
So heed my words⠀
And stare straight ahead⠀
For it’s from this earth you were made⠀
You belong on it truly⠀
Its dirt is your body⠀
And these guards are made only of shade⠀
⠀
You’re a plumber⠀
A builder or an electrician⠀
Whatever it takes to convince them⠀
To let you pass⠀
Without taking your cash⠀
It’s not the money it’s the darkness it gets them⠀
So give them only a nod⠀
A two finger wave⠀
And a subtle but sure acceleration ⠀
With confidence high⠀
Drive right by⠀
Subterfuge will be your declaration ⠀
That you belong in their night⠀
But this day is all yours⠀
Like Dali, and Griffin, and Vincent⠀
Masters of sight⠀
Pursuing their vision⠀
Trespassing all baseless tradition⠀
Their work lives on⠀
But they are gone⠀
At rest and free from earth’s friction⠀
⠀
So when the future arrives⠀
And they ask our ghosts why⠀
We’re still here and still walking this path⠀
We’ll tell them plain⠀
We believed the guards⠀
Who said we’d have to pay to get past⠀
⠀
So stay free in the sun⠀
And when the day is done⠀
Just move right along down the line⠀
And pay not a dime⠀
To the liars in wait⠀
Who seek to trap you in debt for all time⠀

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Not California

It’s pretty hard to get me to paint anything but the California coast. I have a list of commission requests that I try to get to in the studio each year, but often they get pushed back, sometimes a few years if they aren’t requesting a California location. Not sure how this commission snuck onto the easel earlier this year, but glad it did, it was nice to change things up a bit.

Plus, snow!

We don’t see much of that stuff on the coast here.

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Over the Waters

Painted live, (start to finish and without a plan) at the Arcata Theater Lounge a few months ago. I began this one in black and white, accompanied by a piano soloist, with black and white surf films playing on the screen behind the stage. Never felt so classy in my whole life.

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Over the Moon

A slice of California, a view from an elevated state… It’s not always outdoors and in the wind, this one was done late last year in the studio, but a painting like this doesn’t happen without spending some serious hours, days, and years of, well… “researching the topic.”

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Mushroom Hunting

Plein air artwork of Trinidad State Beach on the Humboldt coast of Northern California

They sit motionless, watching passively
Not engaged in the passage of time like you or IYet not outside of it eitherWe travel the worldSearching for new experiencesNew understandings of what it isTo be alive.They watch us come and goAlways returning to their steady gazeChangedYet somehow always the sameThey have no need for comings and goingsYet they do not mock usThey know betterThey have seen enough to know that our days are shortUnlike theirsThey’ve seen our birthsThey’ve seen our joysOur fearsOur loveAnd our tearsThey’ve seen us wedAnd they’ve seen our blood shedBy hateBy sorrowBy intoxicationBy miscalculationThey’ve seen our recreationOur red tapeOur revolutionsThey’ve seen our warsOur battlesOur noblesOur scoundrelsThey’ve seen us dieThey’ve seen our burialsOur burning bodiesOur ashes scattered amongst themThis is their secretKnowing without any effortThat if they wait a little longerThey will see it allIf you are stillAndd you can hear the silence between the rumbling oceansYou just might even hear them singEach has a different voiceOne loud, one softOne strongOne deepOne highOne lowAnd one with voice of our Grandmother

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Pretty Much Flapjacks

Plein air artwork of the Samoa Dunes on the Humboldt Coast of Northern California

These dunes are a lot of different things for a lot of different people. If you wander around them enough, much like coastal dunes near urban areas everywhere, you’ll find the clues left behind- everything from remains of small fires where school kids burned their homework, to all sorts of sordid tales of detritus that I’d rather not mention here.

Speaking of things found in these dunes, I once left a jar of water carefully buried here and took the girl I was in love with on a long walk that led to the jar so that I could find it again and offer it to her and express my hope that one day the water would turn to wine- a metaphor for our future marriage.

Before that, though, I’d come out here and spend the night when I was struggling and confused about life. After one hard night I awoke to find myself just 10 feet from a group of travelers, who showed endless patience and heard me out all morning over a meal of biscuits made from pancake-mix dough wrapped in seaweed and cooked over the coals of a small fire.

Not quite flapjacks, but pretty much flapjacks for the soul.

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Speaking in Tongues

It’s not all plein air and landscapes. Once in awhile I blow steam and do whatever I feel like doing on a canvas at live music event without any planning or reference whatsoever. There’s usually water involved, because painting in this setting often becomes a percussion experience, moving in rhythm with the music, and painting water really allows things to just flow with the various tempos and melodies. The rest is just whatever ideas come along, good, bad or indifferent. I do believe the unintelligible text in the multi color background may have been the result of tequila. This was done at the Redgate Ranch Music Festival a few months ago to benefit Save The Waves Coalition, and they had this handy jug full of margarita just sitting there. Next thing you know it’s all another language. But I don’t know, it still kinda speaks to me even now so maybe there’s more to it after all…

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Sometimes You Don’t

Plein air artwork from San Gregorio State Beach on the San Mateo coast of California

Sometimes you’re a Spanish explorer looking for Monterey Bay on an overland journey from San Diego over 200 years ago with 63 soldiers and more than a hundred
mules.

Sometimes you’re driving around in a large van painting the California Coast on your way to a music festival a few hours north of Monterey Bay.

Sometimes you miss Monterey Bay due to fog and end up way off target above what would later be the site of the town that would be called Santa Cruz.

Sometimes you end up on a several-hour goose chase driving around on the unnamed farm roads above Santa Cruz hoping to paint the view of the vast Pacific from a field of artichokes despite a howling wind.

Sometimes your soldiers are sick and need some rest so you stop at a beach with a wind-sheltered bluff and a clean flowing creek.

Sometimes you give up on the artichokes in the howling wind, and end up at a beach with a wind-sheltered bluff and a clean flowing creek.

Sometimes everyone in the camp gets diarrhea.

Well… sometimes you don’t.

And sometimes after everyone recovers you continue on and become the first Europeans to discover San Francisco Bay instead.

And sometimes you paint a little painting like this instead.

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And They Will Ask

Plein air artwork of the path to Shelter Cove near Pacifica on the San Mateo coast of California

No roads in, no roads out.
Washed out 40 years ago.
Just this narrow footpath remains.

Yet they live here.
And walk this path daily.
Packing life in and out on their backs.

Even the children know who belongs and who doesn’t.

And they will ask.

If you give a wrong answer, I’m not sure what they’ll do.

Don’t give a wrong answer.

It’s a certain kind of heaven here.
But there is a certain kind of hell around the corner.
Complete with fast food and poison.

You’d keep them out too if you could.

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Ones and Zeroes

Plein air artwork from the Devil's slide bunker over Montara State Beach on the San Mateo coast of California

It was only a lifetime ago, that we stood here and watched, scanning the horizon for very real threats. It was a different time, when triangles and protractors could save the world, and ones and zeroes just belonged to the hobo’s walking the rails.

It was only yesterday we stood and watched, scanning the horizon for lightning, long out of range and out of season. Everything’s different now. No need to reminisce. Anything we need, we can pay for with ones and zeroes.

So close we could almost feel the blast. A flash of light. A child screams. But there is nobody left to put up a fight. Just some ones and zeroes.

We never saw it coming because we sold the watchtower, and carved the earth from it’s foundation. It still stands, hovering and weightless above the earth and sea. Inaccessible for all but the names of the fallen, written on the walls with triangles, but traded for ones and zeroes.

I shelter in the book of names, their colors shade my vision. The falling mist and threats of passing showers cannot hinder me now. I am hidden by ones and zeroes.

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More Than Wind

Plein air artwork overlooking Pacifica Beach on the San Mateo County coast of California

I had just finished a piece from the other side of this hill looking up the coast to the north. As I painted that one, what started as a windless day quickly changed. The whitecaps had enveloped every piece of water in sight, inside the kelp, around the headlands, pretty much game over for painting outdoors. But before leaving I wanted to see the view from the other parts of the hill and when I looked out over this side, I saw this painting. Right then, right there. The warm iceplant in the foreground, the cool windcapped sea, the distant fog bank, all of it.
I knew I wanted to paint it, but fighting a stubborn cold, and after wrestling the last one to completion in the wind, I was rather beat. What to do? Come back another day? But there was plenty of daylight still left. The surf wouldn’t be good anywhere. But still, nothing in me wanted to push on at the moment. I headed back down the hill to the van to consider my options.

Now I’m not too good at religion, but still I often talk to God and believe God speaks to us as well. Call me nuts. It’s all good. You may be right. I asked God what I should do, unsure if it was a good idea to push myself back up the hill and keep working. Don’t worry, the answer wasn’t an audible voice, but distinct all the same, it was a thought not my own. “You are man, you are made of mountain.” Okay…

Now whatever you make of that, it had the effect of getting me all fired up and back up the hill I went with a fresh canvas. 3 times it blew off the easel. Once, it hit me in the face (a first). It never held still. The glare on the water was painted by holding the brush a half inch from the canvas and moving it slowly while the wind smacked the canvas repeatedly into the brush as it bounced. I had to hold the easel with one hand while painting with the other. I yelled, fought, and wrestled. It takes more than wind to level a mountain.

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Passing Shadows

Plein air artwork overlooking Rockaway Beach on the San Mateo coast of California

Passing clouds cast shadows of doubt across the rolling hills. Would it rain? Would it hold out? Would the wind come up and blow it all away? The short trail up was full of the oddest switchbacks you’ll ever see. Paved path 50 yards to the left, then 50 yards to the right, to gain a mere 10 feet with each run of the gauntlet. A bench with a view at every right turn. 5 or 6 of them, one above the other stacked up the hillside- ornaments for the Mother of All Switchbacks paved in all her bituminous glory. Hikers, joggers, headphones blaring, baby strollers zipping this way that way, a choreography of life unfolding up and down this hill. Metaphor on metaphor coming on strong, hitching rides on the passing shadows. Halfway up the hill, maybe on the third bench she sat. Unstable. Speaking to the unhearing ears, drowned out by fitness podcasts, she trailed off her sentences with laughter, but void of joy as each one passed. I too had to pass her by, my back burdened with gear and blank canvas, nothing to offer at this time but a piece of my silent heart. She is somebody’s daughter. She locked eyes as I approached. “In five years this could be you…” and she awaited my response as she reverted to her unsettling laughter. “I hear you” was my unthinking reply, and my mind continued “could be me in 5 days” as my own heart laughed at the thought of just how close we all walk that line even on a good day. I hope the shadows pass her by.

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All That Remains

Plein air artwork of graffiti at the Sutro Baths cave at Ocean Beach on the San Francisco coast of California

Notes… er… randomly connected poetry. I blame it on the weather. Holy moly this was a hot humid day. Hid in a cave to paint this one. Ended with bolts of lighting cracking all around. Anyway, this is what was written…

Cerebral flapjacks cooking on the whiskey bar
Artificial roller coaster couldn’t beat the bumper car
Creepers in the bushes don’t look now it aint no good
Sterilize, sanitize, scrub it kook, give em all your food

Paint the cave, take a bath, what about the money
Stick parade, children laugh, hide them from the sun
Drink the water, drink the brine, eat the fish and honey
Leave a tip, exit quick, once the eatin’s done

Sun and wind, electric eels, drying on a line
The pizza burned the house down and blamed it on the wine
Our feet are wet with old concrete the romans laid to last through time
We checked the clock the time ran out but they said they didn’t mind

How about the old ones, still soaking in the past?
The love they made, the things they said, none of which would last
They wrote their names upon the walls like flowers through the cracks
They killed the sky, they drowned the moon, they wrote them loud and fast

Look around, make no sound, what is it we have gained?
This is it, nothing more, this is all that still remains

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Unorthodox

Plein air artwork over Ross Cove looking toward Maverick's at half moon bay on the San Mateo coast of California

Sunday morning.

Somewhere under a cathedral ceiling the choir is singing an old song. Out here under the open sky the choir sings the oldest song.

Somewhere under a cathedral ceiling, a “contemporary worship team” is singing a new song. Out here under the open sky, the choir sings the newest song.

The angels sing softly on the wind, they roar like thunder on the water.

They’ve sung from the beginning.
Unceasing.
They’re still singing now.
They’ll sing until the end. Maybe even longer.
I worship out here with color, because I usually sing out of key.

When I am finished, I will go sing badly in the cathedral. I enjoy those songs too. Or perhaps I won’t sing at all, but still I will hum along.

But one thing is certain- on this Sunday I will go at night, because the morning is full of light.

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