When the Rain Finally Stopped

I’ve been in a storm
That seems like it will never end
And it still howls and hammers to this very day
I’m learning to accept
The shivering soaking that follows
Whenever I step out of the shelter
I’ve built in this old heart
It’s walls are made of driftwood
Branches and limbs
From long dead trees
Discarded ideas of the future
That this storm ripped from their roots
And sent into the raging sea
To be worn smooth
And returned to land again
It’s roof is made of a cheap vinyl tarp
A matter of convenience
And lightness
And bang for the buck
It’s all that keeps me dry
But for warmth
Oh for warmth
For warmth a man must step out
And endure the fury of the skies
Crashing upon the earth
He must find something to burn
Like a dead branch on a living pine tree
Heartwood full of pitch that burns hot
Even in this driving rain

I’ve been in a storm
That seemed like it would never end
Until the tender touch of my lover
Calmed the seas
And tamed the wind
Until the hopeful look in my child’s eyes
Pierced the clouds
And sent the darkness back into the light
Until my words built a shelter
In your very heart
And you thanked me

And for me the rain finally stopped
No storm lasts forever

I cannot stop the rain for you
It is enough to know you’ve found shelter
Beneath these weathered lines
But for warmth
Oh for warmth
For warmth you’ll need to venture out
And endure what you must
To find the living tree
And burn it’s dead branches
Heartwood full of pitch that burns hot
Even in this driving rain

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Backside of the Dunes

One of the last plein air paintings I did before my first daughter was born. When she came along we bought a house and painting was put on hold for several years while frantic nest-building ensued. That was nuts. Two weeks before she was born we were walking to the gas station down the street for the restroom. My wife had taken to cooking on a campstove on the back porch. We managed to get one room finished along with a functional toilet/shower, and stove by the time she was born. Then it was a race to finish the rest of the house and floors before she started crawling. We stayed one milestone ahead of her and managed to pull off a nice little remodel, but it would be another ten years before I’d start painting outside again.

But yeah, distant memories now… I’d forgotten about this painting entirely until a collector recently notified me it was up for sale on craigslist. Once I saw it, I immediately remembered the day I painted it, scouting around for hours being all kinds of particular about the view not being what I wanted. I probably passed up 35 great paintings before settling on this one. I’m pretty sure my thinking at that point was just to not go home empty-handed. I don’t recall what came of the painting- who bought it, or if I gave it away or what, but I was pretty stoked to see it once again. When my collector friend bought it and brought it over to my studio for some touchup, varnish, and re-framing it was a little like being reunited with a long lost child that had gone off into the world and lived a life of its own now back to say hello to Dad once again before heading out on another chapter. I wasn’t so sure of it back then, but now after all these years I reckon it turned out alright after all.

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Skunked

This was the first full studio landscape I completed after spending about 2 years pretty much exclusively painting outdoors. The outdoor approach ended up completely altering my approach to painting in general. Most of the studio landscape work I’ve done in more recent years that folks know me best for wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t spent those couple years outdoors relearning how to see nature.

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First Hike Up the Canyon

This one goes way back…

I first became interested in painting outdoors after seeing work from some of the early California Impressionists at a show in Los Angeles.

I’d been painting for a solid ten years already, a dedicated artist since the age of 16. But those California Impressionists did something with their art that I couldn’t do at the time- make you feel the place. I’d already been painting different spots from memory here and there, but their lifelike renditions tapped into my experiences of being on the coast in a whole different way. I spent the next couple of years painting exclusively outdoors from life.

This was maybe my 7th plein air painting I’d ever done. During this brief time we lived in the heart of the concrete sprawl of Southern California and it was a 45 minute drive to the base of this canyon. But I’d return here time after time to paint because (aside from the mountain bikers) there were no signs of modern civilization up here. It was like returning to the Old California that the masters had painted so well, and along the way, I fell in love.

-Entry on March 5, 2015

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The Top of the Canyon

This is from way up the canyon, to the top of the ridge from where it starts. If I painted the scene behind my back you’d be looking at the 5 freeway or the toll road or something near Irvine and a bunch of strip malls and houses. But hiking up here from the trailhead a few miles down at the coast you don’t see or hear any of that. It’s just rabbits and snakes and birds and the very occasional group of brightly colored cussing angry spandex clad men in a hurry on their wheelie toys. Aside from them, it’s a full sanctuary back there.

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