Sons and Daughters
Geological Chess: The King and His Rookery
I rarely paint with oils, but I’ve done several over the last few years, sneaking them in to the mix here and there as I feel like it, just to remind myself that the grass really isn’t any greener in oils, the morning dew just takes a lot longer to dry.
Most of my paintings are done with acrylics- albeit a specific formula designed to dry slower than your typical art store variety, but yes, water based, dry in hours instead of days, months, or years. I love the simplicity this creates in my workflow on the road as well as the immediacy it creates on the canvas (thin coats dry in minutes) allowing bold changes of color without scraping and/or risking turning once vibrant fields of color into mud. Mix the color, place it on the canvas, don’t noodle around going for anything too painterly, or get bogged in details. Just get ‘er done and move on. Which is how I paint in oils as well, by the way, it’s just a bit more of a chess match where moves need to be planned a bit further in advance.
That said, I generally avoid discussing my medium too much. I love art in general, and truly don’t evaluate a painting I see based on it’s medium. I look for color and form and a conveyed sense of place and time. Those things speak to me. I don’t much care what was used to get there.
The 10 year old kid that wandered by and ended up watching me paint nearly this whole painting from start to finish wasn’t even slightly concerned about my chosen medium, but he would have you know that there was a seal on the beach that I did not include (to be honest I never did see it- my eyes aren’t the best), and also that this painting looks “real” if you get further away from it. So there you go.
Unagi
This is from a quiet little beach near our home. The inlet to the sea out there was letting these perfect little 8-inch waves into the bay and watching them spin along this quiet beach is a rather hypnotic way to spend an afternoon. These flat and expansive beach landscapes have always given me trouble when composing a painting, but I’ve been really trying to make peace with negative space and enjoy a more quiet approach to composition when the need arises.
Moonlight Sessions
Fueled up after a feast at Besta Wan Pizza in Cardiff, and armed with a headlamp, moral support from my pals in mischief Pierce and Petra Kavanagh, and further fueled by the french fries and milkshakes they brought back after dropping me off in this park just up the way from a pack of howling teenagers, well, this is what happened. The city lights in this scene are a good reminder to take nothing for granted as we are soon heading into yet another round of planned power outages because apparently Humboldt County’s power grid is not actually a grid, it’s more like an extension cord running through some gnarly fires that are burning south of us. Lots of trouble for lots of folks all over California right now. Some minor- we had to eat a whole bunch of weird frozen food today because it pretty much thawed in the last outage and it was either eat it, or toss it out. But many south of us are losing a whole lot more and it will take a lot more than a trip to the market for them to recover. Wishing everyone the best out there.
First Things First
A quick one first thing in the morning after spending a week painting with Wade Koniakowsky down in his neighborhood awhile back. I guess I wasn’t done painting yet. Pretty sure I did 4 paintings on this day to celebrate being done with a busy week of… painting? Don’t judge. Just like mourning, we all celebrate in different ways.
Bass and Treble
3rd of 4 paintings painted this day- a larger piece for a single session plein air, but I was warmed up and found some shade so I settled into this one for the afternoon. Speaking of shade, how shady are some of the characters in this parking lot? Saw some things that can’t be unseen, but those are other stories and they aren’t that good anyway. I was focused on the scene beyond. The palms reminded me of ascending and descending notes on a piece of sheet music, the posts and rail a steady beat beneath it all. There’s music in every painting, but this one was louder than usual. Or it could have been the music through my headphones- I was feeling it and might have turned em up a bit. That’s also one of my strategies to get things done in a crowded place with lots of people looking to interact. Just blast music and sing badly. It keeps them at bay anyway. When the easel is rocking, don’t come knocking. Wrong metaphor, but for this parking lot, on this day, I don’t know, maybe not so off after all.
A Stone’s Throw
2nd of 4 paintings painted this day- a quick study done in the midday heat. Figured since I mentioned my last one was the first of four in one day, I better own up to it and show the rest of them as well… bear with me
Painted and titled this a year before the recent fatal bluff collapse on this stretch of coast. On any given day down here, this is a common site- folks posting up right beneath these coastal bluffs. Everyone knows they can and do occasionally collapse, but it seems so easily forgotten when the sun is out and the sand is warm. I painted this scene without a thought for the danger these red umbrella folks had put themselves in. Just be mindful out there, that is all.
Borrowed Time
48mph: The Speed of Memory
I’d driven past this little dip in coast bluff several times over the prior week while painting with Wade Koniakowsky, Norm Daniels, Jose Emroca Flores, and Greg Gorgas a couple summers back. One crispy clear afternoon the scene here really caught my eye. A day or two later I’d dragged Wade and Norm back here promising them a beautiful sweeping scene in the afternoon light. It wasn’t. Turns out the view from a car on the highway is pretty different than the view standing on the scorched earth between the north and south bound lanes. Also an early afternoon haze can put a rather undramatic gray/white blanket across a landscape. Feeling just a tinge of guilt for dragging the guys to this bland scene, we decided to make the most of it, and I just painted this from that first 48mph fleeting memory instead. Pretty sure someone got attacked by ants also. Plein air painting is pretty fun.
Hot Water
I recall that I really wanted to focus on creating a graphic band of information across an otherwise quiet composition here. It was liberating to not feel the need to indulge in extra information in the sky above or grass lawn below. The busy action that cuts across the canvas puts the busyness of our lives in context- together we make up a band of vibrant information in a cosmos dominated by vast empty spaces… trippy. I probably took that a bit too far right there but oh well.
Also I sat and painted this with 3 other artists sitting nearby: Wade Koniakowsky, Norm Daniels, and Jose Emroca Flores. We drank Norm’s fancy drinks while sitting on the edge of a playground cracking jokes and painting. Nobody told us to leave and the kids really dug watching the old guys do their art things.
Oh, and like always on this particular trip, it was rather hot, so I jumped in the water after painting this, and it was not much cooler. The whitewater, being made of air trapped in turbulent water consisted on this day of warm water and hot air, and gave the distinct sensation of not being even slightly cool at all. Not cool. I know this is normal in tropical oceans, but somewhat unusual for California.
Dog’s Eye View
This was a quick one at the end of a longish day of painting with Wade Koniakowsky, Norm Daniels, and Jose Emroca Flores. I believe Greg Gorgas joined in for this quick later afternoon session as well. We’d been painting all week together so by now these guys knew when I wandered off with a 16×20 canvas that it could be awhile- I often spend well over 2 hours on a single painting that size in the field. They looked at their watches and exchanged concerned looks and promptly gave me a stern 1 hour curfew like good parents. I can only wonder if they said to one another after I went marching up the hill that it was “for his own good, you know”. It was a neat view up there. I didn’t have time to think it over much, so I just went after this one in a flurry. I think a few of them are in the painting too, painting by one of those umbrellas on the beach. I made it back right on time, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say they seemed surprised. I can be a good kid sometimes.
Eventually
That’s my dad’s 76 VW parked in the prime spot for this painting of this busy beach access trail down in San Diego. I believe Norm painted a closeup of the bus while I tried to bite off this whole scene. I have a habit of doing that, often taking on a bit too much. It’s not an easy place to get an angle to paint from and I really wanted to show the whole path to the beach, or at least as much as I could of it. At the time there was much discussion of a new proposed stairway to access the beach, and much resistance to the proposed design as well. I’m not sure where that stands now…
When I saw these old railroad ties sticking out of the eroded cliff face, I figured they must be part of an older trail long since collapsed. This trail will eventually suffer the same fate as well, like every sandcastle does. These cliffs aren’t made of stone. And they are also very dangerous as recent tragedies in the area have shown. Be respectful, mind your distance from the base of any steep cliff or coastal bluff, and tread lightly out there.
All You Can Eat
This was a significant painting for me. I have a tendency to want to include everything, and break up every space on a canvas into smaller and smaller pieces. When painting flat beaches or spaces with a lot of empty foreground or sky I usually struggle with those empty areas. Here I finally just let them be. Not sure why it took nearly thirty years of painting to figure that one out, but better late than never, yeah?
Also it was super hot and humid and uncomfortable. I found shade under the stairs to the beach- smart! …And it rained sand every time someone passed overhead coming or going- not so smart!
White Hot
South Swells and Sunlight
Summer is kinda over, except fall really is the best summer around here. That said, rain is in the forecast once again, which means I’ll be hunkered down and catching up on a bunch of studio work over the next few months. Looking forward to spring and summer 2020 road trip season already.
This was from a painting trip with Wade Koniakowsky back in 2018. He wanted to paint this tricky street view so as his guest I wasn’t going to argue. But Wade paints fast. And he had to meet someone that afternoon. We had 1 hour. Maybe less, at least it felt that way. Oh well, I tend to paint wonky cars even when I take my sweet time so there is that. Still a fun challenge.
Rising Tide- Setting Sun
About a year ago, I spent a week in San Diego painting with my friend Wade Koniakowsky and wrapped it up with a show in his gallery. It was a hot week, and sometimes challenging to find the motivation. This was at the end of a long day in the bright sun as the afternoon finally started it’s turn into evening. The tide was high, and a largish swell was running with just two surfers out front getting pummeled for our entertainment.
I set up just up the road from Wade to paint this little bend in the cliff capped off by a scraggly stump of a windblown cypress hanging on for dear life- probably in a tree’s version of a comatose state dreaming of a life in Big Sur.
A group of guys walked by, tattoos, wife-beaters, socks pulled high, beanies even though it was still fairly hot out. They were stoked on the painting. Well not so much the painting itself I reckon, they seemed to me like the sort of crew that doesn’t encounter plein air painters too often, so I think they were just stoked to see a real life hipster version of Bob Ross doing his thing out on a cliff in the wind. They were so jazzed they gave me a cold beer out of the paper sack one of them carried. Heroes.
A short while later, Wade was finished up with his painting and he walked over with his wife and a friend who had brought more beer, and… this is key… wait for it… Chips and salsa. Oh my. I don’t even care how this painting turns out anymore, this might just be as good as it gets right here right now.
451
Another rainy day morning here has me thinking back to hotter times, like summers in San Diego. I’ve realized later in life that a lot of folks actually and truly like hot weather. Like it feels good to them or something. I imagine folks from these climates heading north and braving the cold (55 isn’t really even cold, but it’s relative, yeah?)… They probably look forward to getting back home to trunks and flip flops and t-shirts. For me it’s the exact opposite, I survive these 90 degree days (not really hot, but it’s relative remember?)… Always looking forward to getting back to our northern coast. This painting brings back warm memories. Sweat mostly. But shoot, no complaints… Just another day at the beach.
Why the Fahrenheit 451 reference? Aside from the heat, I just got to thinking of the landmark power plant that looms over this stretch of coast, and how we’ve become so dependent on modern technologies fueled by electricity. Old methods are being lost. The internet provides unlimited information, but at the expense of hard-earned knowledge. Libraries keep closing. We’re burning the books ourselves now, and posting shots of the bonfire on social media. Yes, irony. Part of the fun. Do you smell smoke?
-Not that anyone would gather that sort of message from this painting, and not that it was ever intended either, just an insight to my process of coming up with titles after the fact. Since I never name locations it forces me to think a bit too much occasionally.
Apologies.
Maybe I’ll read a book today.
Intertidal Architecture
The first painting I ever recall painting of a specific location on the California coast was of the Seal Beach Pier. It was for a 7th grade art class. It wasn’t painted on location. It was painted with watercolors. And I’m sure it had lots of details conveyed through the awkward lens of a 12 year old’s eyes. I don’t know where it ended up.
They say some things never change, and I’m inclined to agree.
Except this is not the Seal Beach Pier. It’s not for an art class. It was painted on location. It wasn’t painted with watercolors. And it’s details are conveyed through the awkward lens of my 43 (now 44) year old eyes instead.
Speaking of this pier and my eyes, I’ve never seen a pier with architecture quite like this one. I should have just painted that part on the left that really interested me, but there was that wave that kept breaking off the pier that I just couldn’t leave out, so I ended up foolishly attempting to paint it all in one painting. When it’s my first time painting a place I have a tendency to do this so it’s nothing new, but 2 1/2 hours into these paintings I start questioning my life’s decisions when I realize how much tedious work I’ve taken on. Once finished though, the burrito that follows tastes that much better.
East of the 5
Step Right Up
Not So Distant Shores
Plein air from one of California’s other coasts
Not too often do I paint from places I can’t drive my van to, but it sure is fun to see these coasts with no roads and crystal clear waters. I’m stoked to be heading south for another round with one of our offshore islands next week.
Her View of the Canyon
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Hidden Hills
Vanishing Points
There was a day back in July of 2018 that saw record breaking heat all over California’s coast. This was a few days after that when temperatures here cooled down to a chilly 96 degrees on the coast. Believe it or not, this was a relief from what it had been two days prior. This painting required a mile long uphill hike in this heat. It may have been ill-advised, but I drank a gallon of water and survived. The day before this I had come to the area to scope views and about a mile from here I drove up a little one lane road to a pullout with a commanding view. I passed a biker on the way up, (I know you’re thinking I’m exaggerating- how hot was it if there was a guy on a bike cruising up the hill, but what can I say? Bikers are nuts, you’ll see…) When I reach the top I got out to check things out and considered painting, but decided with no shade to be found it just wasn’t gonna happen in this heat. The biker finally reaches me up there, pauses for a minute and turns to go back down the hill before I’m ready. When I finally leave, I was surprised to come around a bend and see him walking his bike. I stop and check to see if he needs help, and we load his bike in the van and I bring him back down the hill where he can get cell reception and call a friend for a ride home. He wasn’t a novice that didn’t know how to patch a tire either, it’s just that those patch kits don’t really work on tires that completely MELT. OFF. THE. RIM. I told you bikers are nuts. At least this one was. But he somehow made it up that hill in the heat so he is the hero of this story and I’ll stop saying he’s nuts now. But he was. In the best way.