Steam Driven

Painted in the studio, but with a plein air approach- start to finish in about 2 hours, no time to fuss about perfection, loose but with lots of intent… if that makes sense.

I have spent a bit of time in Santa Cruz. Several good friends moved there in the mid 90’s, and have been there since, so I always have good folks to hang with when I pass through that carnival. Plenty of great, and some of my rather oddest, memories come from time spent there. If you see me, ask about it, I’ll tell you some tales.

Anyway, all that is to say in spite of spending more time there than many places down the California coast, I really haven’t done much art there at all.

So when I was asked for some Santa Cruz art for the upcoming Boardroom Surfboard Show (Oct 8-9) I was both stumped and stoked. A great excuse to do something a little different, like an aerial view of the iconic lighthouse looking back to the boardwalk. A flipped script from the usual views we often see.

Even more stoked to now have another excuse to spend some more time in SC, I’ll be heading down next week and painting as many places in and out of town as I can for the two weeks leading up to the Boardroom show.

Slowly but steadily, I’m filling in critical gaps on my way to covering the entire California coast through my art. Give me a few more years, but sheesh, its long overdue to get Santa Cruz represented properly. California without Santa Cruz would be like Hawaii without Kauai- missing a critical chapter.

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Above the Lookout

Quick sketch from a recent session. Spent most of this day scouting for a vantage point for a different painting that I’ve had in mind for a while. Spending nearly half a day hunting for a painting and not getting anything done is a lot like searching for waves and getting skunked so I hammered this out in a rush. I guess that makes this the art equivalent of a quick surf in small onshore slop just to get wet. Felt better than driving home empty handed anyway…

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Timezone # 3

Plein air, but with a twist.

Traditional plein air work involves working fast to give an impression of the place at a particular time of day. The changing nature of light throughout a day limits the working time for a single session so larger pieces usually involve multiple sessions returning to the same location at the same time on different days.

This Timezone series is a slow cooking experiment in painting larger works in single sessions over a longer period, all day even, while still remaining true to the traditional plein air ethos. Each vertical band represents a different “timezone” painted quickly to reflect the light conditions of that fleeting moment.

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Odelay

Named this one after the album that shares the same name from Beck, simply because that’s what I was listening to while standing out on a roof overlooking this vista as I recorded the train tracks through the wetlands below on canvas.

This entire trip was plagued by a persistent coastal marine layer, but I had some good afternoon sun for most of this one. Also had to wrestle a bit with the hillside of torrey pines in the foreground. I’d never noticed before just how drastically those trees change colors at every subtle shift of light. I think it has to do with their needles being fairly open, allowing light to filter and refract through them.

Very beautiful, but a challenging spectrum to convey- one minute they’re glowing brighter than their surroundings as the sun fills their needles, the next they’ve gone darker than their surroundings as the cloud cover reveals their darker color.

-Entry on May 28, 2016

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Sabbath Day

Three things to say about this one…

First, at 30” x 24” it was much larger than I usually like to work out in the field, requiring 2 sessions on different days.

Secondly, I was nearly pushed off this hill and sent rolling down the steep slope behind me by a large dog. It was close for a second there. I don’t know all my dog
breeds, but picture a large, friendly German Shepherd. Seems about right. The owner was friendly as well, but she had no control of this dog when he decided he wanted to
play and went to snatch the dirty paint rag from my hand. It was full of wet paint and I wouldn’t want any dog to get a mouthful of that so I kept it out of his reach. He thought
it was a game and next thing I know he’s paws-up on my chest and I’m teetering off balance while the owner calls him to stop in one of the most futile displays of dog ownership I’ve ever seen. It was an interesting dance.

And thirdly, when painting at busy locations like this one, I often listen to loud music to get amped up and tune out distractions. This one was fueled by old Black Sabbath and
apparently I was heard singing along from the top of the hill. Apologies to the neighborhood. I can only imagine how ridiculous it sounded.

-Entry on May 27, 2016

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Moonlighting

This was done by the light of the full moon and a strategically placed led headlamp- not too close to ruin ability to see the scene beyond it, but close enough to barely discern the difference between my primaries. But only barely, some super weird choices went down for sure. Went with my buddy’s bike for foreground and graphic interest. Seemed appropriate. Very challenging, somewhere in all this dim light I even lost my beer.

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Hobo Lady Giving the Finger to a Freight Train # 1

Apologies for the blurry photo, this one got away before I got a good shot of it.
Anyway, this one could be a long story that maybe I’ll write out one day, but you get the idea from the title. You see some interesting stuff go down at times when you paint outdoors, mainly cause you’re just standing there observing your surroundings for extended chunks of time. This was a good one though. Stopped the train and everything…

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Chatting With Suess #2

From the day I was shown this view, I looked forward to painting it. A sweeping vista of the coast revealed a summary of the region: a densely populated zone, but scattered with open spaces of arid beauty. A fertile ground from which to gaze out and ponder the absurdities of life that we take so seriously from sea level.

Dr. Seuss lived here. Not just metaphorically in the state of reflection on life’s quirkiness, but really, he literally lived right here. Behind this scene is the quiet hilltop neighborhood that he called home.

As I painted these two pieces side by side during a several hour session in the sun and heat of an early summer day, it crossed my mind that the good Doctor himself likely spent time out here walking these trails and enjoying this same view.

During the course of these paintings a few people stopped to chat, mostly because I was sort of blocking the trail and they had not much choice but to interact as they passed by.

But one particularly well dressed gentleman, gray hair, and a short gray beard, really seemed to take an interest in what I was doing on this hill. He mentioned he was “a bit of an artist” himself and enjoyed all sorts of art. He said he lived in a house “right over there” with a wave of his hand toward the home of the late Dr. Seuss.

Oh, I know full well this was just a man who lived in the neighborhood, perhaps even in Seuss’s old home, or at least very close to it. But even while knowing that, I am content to entertain the odd delusion that in some inexplicable way, I may have just met Dr. Seuss himself, and he likes my art. He never tried to buy the paintings (probably hard to do from the Great Beyond) but still, it’s great to know that the man who was likely responsible for the earliest influence in my art life now approves of what I’m doing today from over on the Other Side.

Well, at least in my delusional mind anyway…

-Entry on May 20, 2016

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Chatting With Suess #1

From the day I was shown this view, I looked forward to painting it. A sweeping vista of the coast revealed a summary of the region: a densely populated zone, but scattered with open spaces of arid beauty. A fertile ground from which to gaze out and ponder the absurdities of life that we take so seriously from sea level.

Dr. Seuss lived here. Not just metaphorically in the state of reflection on life’s quirkiness, but really, he literally lived right here. Behind this scene is the quiet hilltop neighborhood that he called home.

As I painted these two pieces side by side during a several hour session in the sun and heat of an early summer day, it crossed my mind that the good Doctor himself likely spent time out here walking these trails and enjoying this same view.

During the course of these paintings a few people stopped to chat, mostly because I was sort of blocking the trail and they had not much choice but to interact as they passed by.

But one particularly well dressed gentleman, gray hair, and a short gray beard, really seemed to take an interest in what I was doing on this hill. He mentioned he was “a bit of an artist” himself and enjoyed all sorts of art. He said he lived in a house “right over there” with a wave of his hand toward the home of the late Dr. Seuss.

Oh, I know full well this was just a man who lived in the neighborhood, perhaps even in Seuss’s old home, or at least very close to it. But even while knowing that, I am content to entertain the odd delusion that in some inexplicable way, I may have just met Dr. Seuss himself, and he likes my art. He never tried to buy the paintings (probably hard to do from the Great Beyond) but still, it’s great to know that the man who was likely responsible for the earliest influence in my art life now approves of what I’m doing today from over on the Other Side.

Well, at least in my delusional mind anyway…

-Entry on May 20, 2016

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Boulder Dash

Two hundred things to get done before I leave, and I go and spend the day boulder hopping with my paint gear all over the Humboldt coast. It truly is a problem. I’m not looking to fix it or anything, but maybe find a nice support group… where they serve donuts and coffee… on the beach… while painting… in between surfs. Hey now?

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May Grays

Out from her
Slumber
Eyes blinking
At the newly minted greens
Of a silver spring day

The forest is full
Of dollars
But she is hungry
For the fish
That used to swim
Up the river

Today
She will
Stand still on the old
Logging road

And even though
The whole earth shakes
On this day
She will not be moved

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A Hope and a Future

Painted live last week at Cannifest. Definitely not plein air. Blank white canvas to finished piece in one session though, no time to overthink it. Finally got a good photo of it. This is the one that won the audience vote up there. Pretty stoked about that.

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