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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Eat the Rich

Plein air artwork from Martin's Beach on the San Mateo coast of Central California

It’s yours, you bought it. Now what? Put up a fence? A bunch of signs telling us to stay out of the places we’ve always gone? Lock the gate? Threaten us with arrest? Have fun with that. We know who belongs here and nobody had to pay our way. It was given freely at birth. At our parents’ birth. And generations back to the founding of the earth. Do what you will to keep us out. We don’t want what is yours anyway. We want nothing to do with you and your plans. We barely even see you at all. Even if you buy a victory from the sellers of legal trinkets at the courthouse market, you’ll still lose in the end. We know who you are, and we know who we are. That is all the permission we need. Stop one, two, a hundred of us. You haven’t scratched the surface. We will wear you down… eventually. You’ll think you’ve won at night, but in the morning we’ll still be there on this beach you think you own, building a fire on which to roast our breakfast with the very same peace and happiness that you neglected when you chose to guard your possessions instead. We’ll warm ourselves by the fire, kept hot and burning with your tragic loss. We’ll slowly devour our meal and wash it down with whiskey and coffee. And even then, you are welcome to join us. We don’t own this beach either.

-Entry on September 9, 2017

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Don’t Eat Us

Plein air artwork from Tunitas Creek on the San Mateo coast of California

A pristine beach. But after the first impression of paradise subsides, one is greeted by the scattering of utter filth left behind by those who were here before. Oh, I know it’s not me or you. It’s Them, of course.

Sure, this painting makes it look rather nice, and no doubt if you make it down to this beach and wander far enough from the access points, you’ll find a truly beautiful remote beach, but along the way you’ll have to close your eyes to some hard truths about your fellow humans. It’s
only a bit of trash, I know in the big picture many would say that’s a fairly small thing. It’s not nuclear war, it’s not systemic genocide, it’s not violent oppression. It’s not even close to that. It’s just people, broken and flawed as we all are, looking to get away from the stress of busy lives, in need of release, getting back to nature, howling at the moon, reveling in friendships, in love, in a beautiful reckless abandon. So what if They lose their mind a bit and get a little careless about what They leave behind? I’m certainly not here to cast any stones.

But the Beast that is Us devours everything.

Forgive Them, They know not what They do.

Forgive Us, as we forgive Them.

Amen.

-Entry on September 9, 2017

—-
I’m not entirely sure what I was even getting at there with the prayer at the end of this painting’s notes. When I see what we do to these beautiful places that don’t have a maintenance staff constantlypicking up after us and hauling away our trash, it just makes me sad, that’s all. A little mad perhaps, but we’re all in this thing called life together, so yeah, mostly just sad.

And why didn’t I paint the trash then? I’ve done that before, nobody likes to see it. So I figured I’d let the art focus on the beauty and use words for the rest.

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Juxtaposition

Plein air artwork from the bluff's over Dead Man's at Land's End in San Francisco California

Just a few days earlier I’d surfed a spot hundreds of miles north that goes by the same name as this one. A memorial was being held for a local surfer who’d recently passed away while surfing there.

This morning as I woke up to make the 6 hour drive south with this destination on my mind to kick off this painting trip, I was jarred by the news of another man’s passing. I had just met him for the first time a few weeks prior on my last road trip. I had known of him for years
though, and I was keenly aware of all he had done for artists all over the world. He had launched careers, lifted up the struggling, showcased what others overlooked. I
just wanted to shake his hand and say hello and it was an honor to do so, and now there would never be a follow up to that encounter.

Life is final like that… and precarious while it lasts. Like an urban wilderness. It’s there, giving of itself to any who will appreciate it, but it’s often trampled, misused, overlooked, and in the blink of an eye the bulldozers come and finish it. A juxtaposition of love and indifference.

May the unfeeling bulldozers rot in a rusty hell. Love is the monkeywrench in this epic novel. Don’t be afraid to sabotage the machinery when needed. Someone’s life may depend on it.

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More or Less

Plein air artwork from the beach at Morro Rock on the San Luis Obispo coast of Central California

I saw an old man reciting poetry to the seagulls here. They waited on his every word, looking for any morsel of wisdom they could read between his lines. Or potato chips, those would work too.

One seagull perched on my van. He wanted to know what I was doing in there. I was painting the scene he calls home. He didn’t like my painting because it didn’t include all the people and towels, umbrellas and bikinis, but mostly the paper sacks resting in open backpacks near the skinny awkward kids. Those contained the best poetry on earth.

Poetry written in love by lonely mothers giving their lives for their young and wrapping their words in plastic and tin foil to keep them fresh in their child’s time of need. Yes, the finest verses ever written, penned from kitchen counters, awaiting their day to be read aloud for the young to hear.

My winged friend above asks for silence. The recital is about to begin…

Um… ok, not sure where all that came from, but on a sidenote, I did include a bit of my childhood in this one, the yellow VW bus my folks got in 1976 when I was just a year old. In fact this whole area is permeated for me by memories of exploration as a teenager here in that old van. My grandparents moved just over the hill behind the coast here in those years and I would borrow the van and head out in all directions to see what waves I could find. I’d often end up right here after being too chicken to surf anywhere else alone at that age. I’d probably eat a sandwich wrapped in plastic and foil afterwards.

Fastforward to now, and here I am eating a sandwich and some chips out of the back end of the big white sprinter van (also in this painting), while talking to seagulls about life. And Poetry. It happens, it’s been a long trip. Full circle, more or less.

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Mourning and Remembrance

Plein air artwork of a shipwreck near Cayucos on the San Luis Obispo coast of Central California

By day they theorize, philosophize, and lay their eyes on this predicament from old lawn chairs behind a makeshift barrier of plastic tape. By night they await the higher tide under the spotlight, searching for answers, but generating none. Once a proud vessel, named for nobility, now on the rocks, without the gin, or perhaps because of it if the wind spoke truly. Each morning brings a new revelation, coffee and binoculars the potent ingredients of this daily vision quest. She is a solar eclipse, her shining brightness now darkened by the lesser light. Shucked like an oyster, removed from her shell of open water, she now sits waiting for the ocean to swallow her hull.

The heiress watches on, a mix of rage and longing, as she carves an homage of color to the one she once knew. All the while they watched this maiden work and no one said a word. It is no different with you or I. While our voyages may end differently, still every voyage must end and we can only hope there is a daughter by our side to mourn and remember us when our day arrives.

True story.

The boat got stuck on the rocks here just before the solar eclipse last year, and over a meal of oysters with my friend in the area, @gnosart, I learned the boat used to belong to her grandfather and was originally named after her brother. I told her I wanted to paint it, and convinced her to come with me the next day and we stood on the bluff and painted while the captains came and went. I could have just told you this plainly right off the bat, but the whole thing was too poetic to introduce like that. 

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The Sea Before Dark

Plein air painting of the cliffs over Pismo Beach on the San Luis Obispo coast of California

A focal point for those just passing through. After miles of inland panoramas the road opens up to a view of the ocean here. But only for a moment or two. Then it’s back to the cows and the farms and the country music. It’s hard not to stop once in a while. It’s just so easy. And when traversing the entire state north to south in a hurry, it’s often the last chance for a quick dip in the sea before dark. 

This was painted on one of those gray days where the midday light is filtered and flat, so I used the landscape and bending lines of swell for the architectural reference for this composition, but entirely invented the more dramatic light. Sometimes you just have to find inspiration where you can.

In this case I was inspired by a memory from my youth that took place here around 30 years ago. But it was more than the just a memory, it was also an important life lesson- one that every ocean-going person learns the hard way at one time or another.

My folks had to make a trip to the area to visit my grandparents nearby and we ended up staying a night or two at one of the hotels that line the cliffs along here. They let me take a friend along on the trip and the first thing we did when we arrived late in the day was to go look at the waves from in front of the hotel. We stood watch there for a total of maybe 2 minutes and decided it looked like fun waist high waves and rushed down to get a few before dark. 

I had only been surfing for maybe a year at this point so it never occurred to me that the waves could be bigger than they looked from the cliff. My friend didn’t surf at all, he just grabbed his boogie board and a big grin and hopped in the rip current with me and we both got sucked out to sea and straight into solid set wave closing out across the beach. We emerged and reeled in our boards, eyes wide and way out of our league, wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.

We scratched for the horizon as more sets marched in and made it over them unscathed. The relief was short-lived though as we realized the swift current was pulling us north into the steep cliffs and if we didn’t make it back to the beach quickly we’d be unable to get out of the water at all. The day was nearing an end and I had visions of helicopters searching for us in the dark. Yikes. 

No time to overthink it, we waited out the next set of waves and immediately paddled toward the beach in an all out survival sprint. Clearing the outside bar was a relief and I still recall looking over at my buddy as mid-sized wave walled up and we both managed to scratch into it and ride it back to shore. He still had that big ol grin. I don’t know how I looked to him, but I promise I wasn’t smiling.

3 lessons I learned that day. First- it’s almost always bigger than it looks when watching from a cliff. That’s a lesson every ocean-going person must learn the hard way at one time or another. Second- I am a big chicken. It was probably only head-high. I am still a big chicken today. Whatever. I still have fun out there. Third- leave it to a teenager on a boogie board to think near-drowning is kinda fun. 

Hovering over the water
Weightless over the face of the deep
The storm rides silently off to the hills
To darken the eyes of the cattle
And drown out the country music

The light that remains
Clear and unfiltered
Falling from above
Reveals an orchestra
Of liquid geometry
At once carnal
Yet also divine
Each note the offspring
Of a passing storm
With the laws of physics

We’re drawn to the music
Expecting a symphony
But once inside the concert hall
We’re swept away in a mass movement
Of sweat and leather
Nearly drowning
In the mosh pit

It is there that we learn
This law of the sea-
It’s always bigger
Than it looks from above

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Leave No Trace: Side A

Plein air painting of the coast at Cave Landing near Avila Beach on the San Luis Obispo coast of central California

Arrival: Late Afternoon.  Look west, hike to bottom of trail. View from top was better. Plus creepy creepers lurking in the reeds everywhere down here. Trash strewn. Beautiful place, but yuck. Back to top.

Look east, hike toward cove on that side of this headland. Trash strewn. Starting to feel guilty. Might head back to the van and dump some beer cans and toilet paper around at random to blend in better with the local crowds.

I continue on, decide not to add my own trash.

Arrive at fork. Turn right, holy mackaroly, that’s a neat cave. Spend some time enjoying this marvel of nature. And graffiti. Because that’s what I feel like doing when I see a place this beautiful. Quick! Write my name on something, pronto!

I still prefer the view from the top though. Head back up the trail. Am I being followed? Creeper country picnic down here. Scope view from top. Neat granite rock formation in foreground. Like an arcing wave. Covered in graffiti, of course, because names need to be written here.

Go back to van, retrieve supplies, return to paint. College girls smoking weed and giggling. No thanks, but thank you for offering.

They leave and another couple arrives and picks up right where the girls left off. But they don’t offer me any. I don’t hold it against them.

One more group of kids show up, and climb over directly in front of where I’m painting. But they leave because it smells pretty bad down there. After writing your name on a rock, you usually need to urinate… maybe even on the rock you just wrote your name on.

The day gets late. A cute young couple expecting their first child shows up with a photographer to take pretty sunset photos. Probably going to crop out the beer bottles and graffiti.

Not me. They are part of the story. When I am done I drink a beer of my own while the sun finally sets. I don’t smash the bottle when I’m done though, I just take it with me and leave no trace.  I don’t think I belong here.

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Leave No Trace: Side B

Plein air painting of graffiti and rock formations at Cave Landing near Avila Beach on the San Luis Obispo coast of California

Arrival: Late Afternoon.  Look west, hike to bottom of trail. View from top was better. Plus creepy creepers lurking in the reeds everywhere down here. Trash strewn. Beautiful place, but yuck. Back to top.

Look east, hike toward cove on that side of this headland. Trash strewn. Starting to feel guilty. Might head back to the van and dump some beer cans and toilet paper around at random to blend in better with the local crowds.

I continue on, decide not to add my own trash.

Arrive at fork. Turn right, holy mackaroly, that’s a neat cave. Spend some time enjoying this marvel of nature. And graffiti. Because that’s what I feel like doing when I see a place this beautiful. Quick! Write my name on something, pronto!

I still prefer the view from the top though. Head back up the trail. Am I being followed? Creeper country picnic down here. Scope view from top. Neat granite rock formation in foreground. Like an arcing wave. Covered in graffiti, of course, because names need to be written here.

Go back to van, retrieve supplies, return to paint. College girls smoking weed and giggling. No thanks, but thank you for offering.

They leave and another couple arrives and picks up right where the girls left off. But they don’t offer me any. I don’t hold it against them.

One more group of kids show up, and climb over directly in front of where I’m painting. But they leave because it smells pretty bad down there. After writing your name on a rock, you usually need to urinate… maybe even on the rock you just wrote your name on.

The day gets late. A cute young couple expecting their first child shows up with a photographer to take pretty sunset photos. Probably going to crop out the beer bottles and graffiti.

Not me. They are part of the story. When I am done I drink a beer of my own while the sun finally sets. I don’t smash the bottle when I’m done though, I just take it with me and leave no trace.  I don’t think I belong here.

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Economy of Scale

Plein air artwork showing the view of Morro Bay and Morro Rock from Black mountain on the central California coast

Geology trips me out. They always say that the large rock formation at the mouth of this bay is some sort of plug in a volcano. Okay… well I guess that’s pretty convenient. Maybe that’s why they are so strict about not letting climbers set foot on the thing- don’t want to risk any climbers setting bolts on a weak spot and causing the whole thing to blow. No good when that happens.

But yeah, I wanted to get a good view of this landmark so I scouted a nice short trail up a nearby peak and made my way to the top. Upon arrival, I spun two things. First was a full 360 or two, taking in the panoramic view from the top. Pretty epic, but lacking foreground interest up there. So the second thing I spun was a 180 back down the trail to a large granite boulder I’d passed on the way up.

I thought there was a certain visual poetry in painting this boulder in the foreground, with a distant view of a downright massive rock formation that would make this boulder appear but a pebble if they were to sit side by side. An interesting economy of scale, to misuse a phrase.

If that one is some sort of volcano plug, maybe this one is plugging up an epic hot tub. I’ll have to file a complaint with the geology department. Hiking around with a studio on one’s back, one needs all the hot tubs one can find. Preferably without giant rocks on them. 

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Hole in the Fence

Plein air artwork from the San Luis Obispo county coast near Ragged Point in central California

Under the barbed wire, across a bluff top meadow, promising lines appeared bending around the nearshore reefs. Don’t let the painting of this dreamy lineup fool you. Sure, in a still moment, it was a vision of perfection, but taken in the 4th dimension of time, it was nothing more than a broken promise. At least today. Broken lines, appearing, shifting, disappearing, reappearing at random across the reefs.

Except that one section, time and time again, it would suck out and rifle off a short makeable line before chaotically disembarking itself on the scattery dry rocks inside. I still don’t think it was truly rideable except perhaps with the right company and a certain state of mind, maybe not drunk on wine, but perhaps a bit intoxicated with old fashioned fun. And a beat up board. Maybe a helmet. Ok, probably not, but still maybe…

But whether the waves ever shape up or not, something happens here, as the worn path under the barbed wire fence testifies. Sometimes hunting for waves is high tech, satellite imagery and swell forecasting. Other times it’s a bit more primitive, scanning the ground for broken twigs and tracks not well covered, tracking an elusive prey. The hole in the fence here certainly falls under the latter category, though it could just be good fishing grounds. I’ve got a lot of mental notes on places like this up and down the coast.

It doesn’t matter too much to me if the clues lead to good waves or not though, it’s the process that I’ve come to love. This holy fence led to a 2 hour surf check in the early morning standing alone on a remote piece of coastline while studying the color and spacial relationships of the land and sea with paint.

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Most Wanted

Plein air artwork from Point Estero in San Luis Obispo county on the central California coast

I’d been wanting to paint this stretch of coast for years. It’s not a place I’ve visited much, but even driving by as a kid learning to surf years ago, this area called to me. The deepwater reefs and powerful surf were out of my league and no doubt when things get real out there they still are. The angle of the coast around that bend looks nearly due east to the place of the rising moon (no moon at this time, it was around the time of a solar eclipse, so if you’re a moon person, you know that only happens during a new moon, but you should see this place when the full moon rises… oh my, but I digress).

As much as I am drawn to this area, it seems the police are drawn to me here as well. I’m a slow and mostly careful driver and don’t get pulled over much, but I was pulled over  ight here, maybe 8 or 10 years ago, driving my old GMC van. Pretty sure my muffler fell off just prior to being pulled over. I managed to stop and retrieve it, throwing in the back of the van, muttering my best impression of an Aussie friend in Baja when part of his old Ford Hornet wracked itself loose over a large rut in the road, “Reckon we might need that later, mate.”

And you should have heard that old van without the muffler. It was the best aftermarket upgrade I’ve ever had done to a vehicle. Sounded like a big ol’ motorcycle, a rumbling racket of yellow radness. RIP Vandura, you were a beast.

But it wasn’t the missing muffler that I was pulled over for. The officer said my license plate light bulb was out… Really? Who gets pulled over for that? I think he just wanted to take a look in the van and scope out all the contraband that wasn’t there.

He starts by asking for my driver’s license. I hand it to him and in the photo on the license I was actually really clean cut, fresh shave, button down shirt, all that. He looks at my big ol’ bushy beard and rat’s nest of unwashed hair pouring out under my hat, then back at the photo and says, “I don’t see a beard on here,” to which I say, “no, no it’s on there officer,” and proceed to point to my last name on the license. (These days I’d have likely been pulled out of the car and pinned down for reaching out the window like that, but like I said it was a while back.)

He laughed and changed his whole tone after that and let me go. He didn’t even write a fix-it ticket, and come to think of it now, it never even crossed my mind to fix it either.

Fast forward to this day, and while painting up on this hill, a police car pulls up just at the base of the hill right behind my van and I see the officer in the patrol car watching me up here. This being public land, I certainly wasn’t trespassing, I was parked legally and all that, but it still stirred up that distant memory of the earlier interaction I’d had on this stretch of road.

Then, I kid you not, later on as I packed all my gear (and this painting) back down to the van, another officer pulls up and watches me load my gear back in the van. Just staring me down the entire time, like he was waiting for me to make a false move and let all the weapons and drugs spill out of the van into the parking lot, because everyone knows that’s what artist’s vans are usually packed full of, right? Ok, maybe not. But still to this day I’m not sure what he expected see. He must not have seen it either, because as soon as I’d loaded everything back in the van without any spillage of contraband, he drove off
without a word.

Good grief, this seems to happen a lot in these parts. I guess that’s just me around here. Matt Beard- Almost Wanted Fugitive Van-Driving Art Guy.

-Entry on August 22, 2017

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B.Y.O.B.

Plein air artwork from the trail to Sierra Nevada point on the san luis obispo county coast of central california

We came in search of gold. We’ll leave with pockets full of solitude. We speak to the wind. We live here now, everything else is dreamtime. The cars and houses, the monies and the media, the interconnected web of information that ties us all together… none of that can truly exist at all. We know because we’ve listened to the quiet that raged so loud our ears bled. We know because we’ve stood on the edge and peered over and seen everything we ever held on to smashed against the rocks and washed away, only to be returned as the treasures of small children on the outgoing tide. We know because, if we didn’t know, there would be condos and pizza parlors, cotton candy and neon lights, the insatiable camera lens devouring all… but there is not. There is nothing out here. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. It belongs to us all. It is all of us. Dream on, dreamer, but when you awake, you’ll find nothing here. And that will be all that you really need.

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