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.

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by