Matt Beard

Reclamation

Written on April 22, 2020

Painting at the Jambalaya was always a wild time. A small space with a loud sound, and excited music fans moving with abandon, meant that my spot to post up was on the floor directly beside one of the speakers getting my ears blown out and going with the flow of knocks and bounces from dancers all swirling in one collective rhythm.

And with all that going on, I’d watch these unplanned visions emerge from the canvas as I swirled paint along with the moment. A gas mask, discarded, lying in a shallow puddle with fresh spring growth emerging. The mask no longer needed. But why not? Because there was no one left to need it? Or was the time of need simply over? I wasn’t thinking this through while painting, there wasn’t time in that high-octane environment to separate thought from action… There seems to be rusting metal nearby. The water acidic. But the sky blue. A single bird reflected in the glass of the mask flies overhead. I saw it emerge like Noah’s dove that returned with a branch in it’s beak. A sign that we’d soon be able to get off this blasted boat we’ve been stuck on during this 40 day storm. The time to rebuild would come soon.

Holy moly. I miss that stuff. I know a lot of you do too. There is nothing like good live music and the feeling of being caught up in the moment.

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Shoebox Series XII

Recent commission, but a solid throwback to 2008, when the first 8 paintings of this series were published in the Surfer’s Journal (Second County South, vol.17 #3).

I don’t work from photos all too often, but this series is an exception. The idea isn’t to recreate a perfect photo (waste of paint, just print the photo already), but rather to use the grainy, off kilter shots that surfers and their buddies have taken and saved in a shoebox (or envelope, hard drive, etc…) as mementos of their surfing lives. These moments were meaningful enough for them to stash away, so I reckon they speak volumes more of our real surfing lives than any number of idealized candy coated plastic hors’d oeuvres served up with palm tree umbrellas on platters of tropical blues.

These gritty snapshots just become the jumping off point for each painting, attempting to find something transcendent and universal in each image. This one became a reminder to hold your line when incongruent worlds collide.

*Commissioned as a gift for the surfer in the piece. Hint, hint. I do these upon request.

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Sunday Skylark

A recent studio commission. I reckon if I’d tried to paint this one on location standing in the middle of PCH, I’d likely have ended up dead, hospitalized, or in jail before finishing. It’s no secret that I prefer the Studio of the Open Sky these days, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate the quiet simplicity of the home studio where one can paint anything that comes to mind without even leaving the house. But I ramble…

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Chasing Gold

It’s funny. Here is one of the major epicenters of California. You’d think that, given its importance to the state, I’d have spent a lot of time painting this stretch of coast.

I haven’t. I’ve mostly avoided it, to be honest. It’s hard to find parking. It’s stressful. It seems to be one of those areas where people will walk right over you and not think twice. Especially if there’s a celebrity nearby. And there often is.

The most troubling part of it all is that it leaves you very few choices. Adapt, or be trampled. The aggressive side of our human nature seems tailor-made for places like this where sixteen lanes of speeding metal spiral their way around this basin in a mad rush to get down the drain.

Drive in at night for best effect. Go a little faster. Turn the radio up. Marvel at the police
helicopters shouting orders at the moon. Laugh when it resists arrest.

Love it or hate it, this is also California.

When I was asked to create this painting for the California Gold Vintage Surf Auction, I
knew I’d be keen to redeem the coast here from the stereotypes that are so common… and so commonly true. I wanted to show another side of this coast that I love.

The hills outside of the city are breathtaking, and while much of them are owned and
divided among the millionaires, they are largely undeveloped as well. These open space Old Testaments tell of the way things have always been. The moon rises and sets unimpeded out here, the same as it always has. And while the city is full of dreams and ghosts, busy chasing gold in the fast lane, the rabbit trails outside of town are paved with it.

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Chipps and Salsa

Honored to be selected as the official event artist for the 2015 Luau & Legends of Surfing Invitational coming up later this summer on August 9. Every year a new artist is commissioned to create their own variation of the event location, Scripps Pier in La Jolla, CA. This incredible event has been running for 22 years to raise funds for UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center. Here is what I came up with for this year’s piece, proudly dedicated to my sister Heather recently lost to cancer.

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Upholstery and Smoke

She was just a child
Leading the Rebellion
With discarded toys.
Striking out
At them.
At us.
At herself.
And though she made a fool of the Enemy
Throughout the Ten Year War
She lost the Final Battle yesterday.

And now she is gone.

She left home too soon.
There was heaviness in the entry way
As she said her goodbyes.
We did not understand why.
Our parents cried.

She picked us up in her Chevy Nova at the age of sixteen.
We were only nine.
She smoked cigarettes like a real grown up.
We couldn’t see the road.
Just the upholstery and the smoke.
She gave us punk rock.
She bought us pizza.

She fought like hell.

If we’d learned anything from her
Perhaps we could fight back these tears right now.
But every drop is a salty rebellion
Led by a mere child
With discarded toys.
She was never one to be easily denied.

Goodbye Sister.

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Just Before the Fog Never Quite Burned Off

Plein air from yesterday. Left my brush roll in the studio and had to makeshift with some random brushes dug up in the crevasses of my van. Then hiked up to this spot and went to setup and realized I left my canvas in the van, by the the time I walked all the way down and got got back up here the fog had only gotten thicker, so I had to just noodle around with the foreground for awhile. The forecast called for sun sooner or later. Maybe it was later, we left before then. But yeah, finally the fog lifted just enough to see the beach across the harbor and I was able to lay this one out and had it all blocked in, then sat around waiting, eating sandwiches, pestering my painting buddy Steve Taylor, just waiting for the weather to really shift. Finally had to go for it as it was, slapped it together and called it a day. At least it never rained.

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To Air is Human

Written on April 21, 2020

The name of the band that played that night I painted this was Terrapin Flyer if I remember correctly- a Grateful Dead cover band. I never was all that into the ol’ GD, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate their music, so it was a ton of fun to hear those familiar tunes played loud and live as they should be. I was in the back of the hall painting with my back to the stage so I never really saw them up there, I was just absorbed in the movement and music and the somewhat troubling scene unfolding on this canvas before my eyes. But the band did a great job and from where I stood and how I experienced the whole thing, Jerry himself may as well have been up there.

But that was before this wave of fear and death began to sweep over the entire world. Looking at this painting now gives me the eebie jeebies. Why can’t I just paint happy trees all the time? What undercurrent was this tapping into anyway? Was this art imitating life, or is this life imitating art?

Either way, here we are now. My heart is breaking for all the live music that is just not happening anymore. As an artist, of course I am concerned for my livelihood in the face of the hard years to come, but then then I think of the musicians severed from their audiences, let alone any income from the gigs they used to rely upon. How long will it be before shows can be booked again? Even if the stores and galleries are re-opened, won’t large public gatherings be the last thing to remain banned for a much longer time? And even without all this, there wasn’t there some legal mess of a new law regarding gig workers as employees that was looming over the entire live music industry here? Dark days indeed.

I miss the music.

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Water’s Edge

Painted in the midst of a whole herd of landscape artists, several of whom I’ve looked up to for years, so I was stoked I didn’t botch this one, even though it is a rather odd composition. I really only chose it so I could work in the shade of the rockstack behind me, which also came in handy to hop on and cling to once or twice as waves washed up across the narrow berm between the rock and the water’s edge. Never got my boots wet, but the rising tide did force a higher ground relocation at one point.

On another note, have I ever told you guys about my giant van? I love it, room for everything, art junk, surfboards, wives, children, you name it. It’s great. The drawback of having so much room is that it gets full of all sorts of things that occasionally rattle loose from their moorings on the bumpy road home and cause all sorts of ruckus and mayhem back there. On this day it was a heavy tripod palette tray that took flight and punched a L shaped gash into the sky on the right side of this painting. It’s been patched and repaired now but if you look close it’s there to see. Just glad it was a clean tear instead of a long smearing scrape through the wet paint. That could have been unsalvageable, as it is I reckon someone will still dig it, even if it’s just me.

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Old Haunt

Painted this one two days ago. Used to spend a lot of time up on this bluff and out in the shifting sloppy beach break out front. Haven’t painted up here in about 8 years. Shortly after setting up another painter walked up and cut right to it, “where you from?” I was laughing inside, usually only hear that kind of introduction in the water in these parts, didn’t know it extended to land based art culture as well. I knew the guy, though, great artist and we’re connected on these here social medias, so once he figured out who I was he smiled and warmed up. Almost wish I’d bluffed him to see how deep the art localism gets up here. Bluff top turf brawl, my easel tossed off the cliff, busted glasses, all that. He was maybe a bit older but he’d have rung my clock I reckon. Good times anyway. I should come out here more often I guess.

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Fleeting Glimpse

Painted live at Redwood Curtain brewery during a live music set from Likwefi. No plan, just paint and let the music guide the pace. Twice during the show I thought I saw a bird and tried to define it, but the more I developed it, the worse it looked as it wasn’t a planned drawing of a bird, just some random forms that hinted at a bird, like seeing shapes in clouds. Ended up resolving the piece by bringing it back to pure abstraction during the closing songs. Cracks me up thinking of folks watching me paint at these things and thinking that I know what I’m doing. If they could only step inside my head for a moment or two they’d wonder how I even left my house and made it to the show. Pure scatterwonky. And yet for all that, I still somehow end up with a painting I kinda dig. Not a bad deal.

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Up the Coast

They took one last look at the river
And longed for another time
Saddened by the parade of motorhomes and meth
Stretching from the ends of the earth to right here and right now
They refused to join the neon funeral procession
They took their stand
And to this day they remain
Still
And beautiful
And made of solid gold

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Passing Through VI

Painted Live at Oysters and Ale benefit for Humboldt Made a few weeks ago. These live pieces are a fun outlet for me, a welcome change of pace from drawn out studio work or weather/light/location dependent plein air work. I never really know where a piece is going to go and that’s at least half the fun.

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Free Range #33: Last Rites

Technically, this would be the 33rd piece in the Free Range series. Odometer maybe at 1525 miles or so. Painted it on location in La Jolla at the VIP party for UCSD’s Legends of Surfing Invitational that benefits Moores Cancer Center. This little one raised $1200 to fight cancer that night. Shortly after that I was keeled over in pain and ended up in the ER at Scripps hospital. They couldn’t figure it out and sent me on my way where the stabbing pain came and went for the next 2 weeks. Tests, appointments, all that. Still no answers but feeling better. Reckon 3 weeks of van life and brutal work pace had me neglecting proper nutrition and hydration and I paid the price this time. Anyway, all that is to say I’m not dead yet, and even though this is the last painting I’ve done as of this moment, there will be more. Just a reminder we never know what tomorrow brings. Life is short. Love people. Now.
I’m beyond stoked to have been part of such an amazing event and grateful to all that work so hard to make it happen each year. I hope to be back, and in better condition to howl at the moon and fight cancer like a pirate with you all next year. Heroes.

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