Artwork Notes | MATT BEARD ART

None Shall Pass

An arch that’s been painted once or twice or a thousand times before this, and will be again by countless others walking these shores.
All I know is that at least on this day they better approach from the south, because there was no getting past the rocks on the north side. A steady stream of snap-shotters and well dressed selfie-seekers poured into this arch as I stood and painted, and everyone one of them stopped and turned around to go back to from whence they came.
None shall pass.
For effect feel free to picture a pirate sitting on the arch spitting and cursing all of us softies down below, the dirty soles of his feet swinging in the wind overhead, while the barrel beside him leaks almost as much as the streams of rum running down his beard*.
NONE SHALL PASS.
*I am not the pirate. Any resemblance is purely coincidental and imagined.

Capital Punishment

To kill a killer. Justice served. Except in this case I don’t think the killer ever actually killed anyone, and even if so, it was certainly not intentional. “Killer” was only a nickname. In fact the “killer” was much loved and revered by California surfers until 1966, when capital punishment was dished out and the “killer” would be no more. You know what I’m talking about. But if you don’t it should be too hard to look up. The clues are plenty. I will say this though, my wife’s family was from this little town. There’s even a m…

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The Royal Treatment

Already a long day of painting, this was a late afternoon session down the street from a restaurant where I’d just ate and drank to my fill with an old friend. I was supposed to be delivering a fresh batch of canvas prints to the restaurant as well. After a relaxed meal I told them I’d be right back with the art that was in my van around the back, then promptly got to talking with my old pal about where I might go paint next and he wanted to show me this spot and we got so excited that I jumped in the van and followed him down the hill to paint this scene. About half way through pa…

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Hiding in Plain Sight

Access to this pocket of reef beneath sandstone cliffs is now through a private club serving coastal California’s elites. An old friend of mine grew up surfing here before the club existed. The owner of the club is a rather infamous self-important jerk of sorts, and was probably here for an event, when security recently stopped my friend at the gate. They asked if he was on the guest list. Of course he was. He gave them a name. The guard fumbled with the list and with smug satisfaction placed his hand on the car as he was about to direct this unwelcome guest to turn around. My buddy gl…

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South by South

There are souths, and there are Big Souths, and there are places like this that are still south of those while still being north of many other souths, let the reader understand.
I’d spent the morning painting out on that headland just past the breaking waves, and the view in this direction made for a perfect bookend of an afternoon. Like justice being served.
Speaking of justice, we need to figure out how to serve justice to folks that are trashing beautiful places like this. The view is worthy of the glossiest post card in the gas-station spinner rack, and yet the ground is covered in debris like the gnarliest gas station restroom you’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s sad. Sorry to mention it here, but it’s hard to see and say nothing about. If it gets much worse I might have start including the toilet paper drifting in the wind in these paintings and nobody, nobody, nobody wants that.

Rags to Riches

A road closure not too far north of this headland made for a quiet night sleeping on a highway pullout. The view I'd come for was obscured by the marine layer which hovered about 200 feet above sea level so after a quick cup of coffee and some grumbling in the mist I made my […]…

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Twenty Twenty-One

Stylized painting of waves breaking on a steep beach during a storm on the northern California coast

This is a follow up piece to a painting I did back in 2020. You might remember that one, it was a little darker, a little stormier, a little more 2020. This one is 2021. It’s still dark and stormy but there is a break in the clouds at least for a moment. I was thinking about the power of the ocean and how in spite of its beauty, it really doesn’t care about you at all and if you find yourself in the wrong place out there, well, you’re in a heap of trouble. It may be a beautiful world for all of us at times, but just like the ocean, if you find yourself in the wrong situation, the world a…

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Nosebleeds

Plein air landscape painting of the Wedge in Newport beach in Orange County on the southern California coast

To be honest I don't know why I'd never painted here before, I've painted a lot of Orange County beaches, both iconic and off the beaten path, but none more famous in modern times than this one. On any south swell you can expect to see footage and photos all over the internets and newspapers […]…

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Irish Coffee

A painting of the view overlooking Irish Beach on a clear morning on the Mendocino coast of northern California

A quick family getaway. An early morning stumble across a cow pasture. A desperate and failed effort not to spill my coffee while being distracted by this beauty. A fleeting glimpse of my wife jogging on the beach beneath the first light of day. How does she do that at this hour? I can barely walk.

Prime Pelican Real Estate

A plein air painting of the steep cliffs of the Pelican Bluffs trail on the Mendocino coast of northern California

It had been awhile. We needed to getaway and we found what we were looking for on the Mendocino coast. A small house. Just our family and the wind and more beauty than one should rightfully be entitled to, unless it were by grace. Speaking of a different form of grace, pelicans are the masters, and it was a joy to paint this stretch of coast in their presence. What is going on with earth here though? Dizzying displays of plate tectonics. I set up a few feet from the edge, tying my easel to a small fence, partly to keep it from blowing away in the howling wind, and partly so I’d have something secure to grab on to should the heights send me spinning asunder.

End of Trail

A plein air painting of prayer flags on a barbed wire fence at the end of the Pelican Bluffs trail on the Mendocino coast of California

After finishing the previous painting, I ventured further on to explore this coast trail to its logical end. I found it here. The sign told me so. The ribbons and trinkets tied to the barbed wire fence spoke of the prayers of others who’ve walked this lonely path. And I thought to myself, “that makes sense… that’s what people do at The End.” The next day I returned with my family to share this beauty with them. It wasn’t so lonely when they were there with me. I didn’t think so much about Prayers or The End, instead we just sat and watched the whale spouts dancing like ghosts on the horizon.

The End of California

A painting of a passing storm looking toward the Oregon border on the Del Norte coast of northern California

I’ve painted the border fence at the Mexico border before, but this is the first painting I’ve done of California’s northern border. There’s really not much of a border there. Just a beach stretching into the distance. Oregon hasn’t yet built their wall to keep us out, but I won’t be surprised if they have plans in the works. On this day though, there was no need for a dramatic fence or wall, the weather provided the perfect border drama illuminating Oregon while leaving California in the dark.

The Entry Way

A painting of the beach at Houda Point near Camel Rock on Humboldt county's Trinidad coast in northern California

A fine late-winter day on our local coast. It doesn’t get better than this around here. I saw other painters perched at nearly every lookout on this short stretch of scenic road, but somehow I managed to paint this one without getting tangled up in any arguments about ultramarine blue.

No Mere Maid

An imaginative painting of a coldwater mermaid with neoprene wetsuit skin on a rugged Nothern California coast

At last! This one was 7 years in the making- just a quick pencil sketch way back when, set it aside, and forgot about it until I got a call back in November asking me to paint a “slutty mermaid”. That wasn’t gonna happen. But it reminded me of this idea for a north coast mermaid. She is strong, she is content, she thrives in a harsh and unforgiving environment. She is beautiful, but her beauty isn’t flaunted to feed or lure any depraved eyes. She is who she is, and she is No Mere Maid.⠀⠀The original sketch was just a whimsical idea, but as I started painting her it was like a well …

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Better Places

Plein air painting of vans and a VW bus at Moonstone Beach carpark on the Humboldt coast of Northern California

Painted on location, well at first anyway, back in 2017. Then I never went back to finish it properly so about a year or two later I took it to a silent disco on the beach below and tried to finish it there, but got so distracted with silent disco-ing that I couldn’t think straight about the painting and only painted in circles instead of arriving at any sort of destination other than right back in storage where it was before and finally when I was asked to paint another painting from a similar vantage point (my last post) I figured I should pull this one from the dustpile and brush it off and have another go, and so it went.
Lots of memories here. Some would call it one of our Better Places. Others might say too many of us call it that, which is usually what I say when I’m trying to park my van in that warzone on a Saturday afternoon.
Just kidding. I don’t even try to go here on a Saturday afternoon anymore.

This Machine Converts Money into Noise

A plein air painting of Atlas Vans workshop in Ventura

The pandemic didn’t slow me down, it was a combination of other things; my dad’s health was certainly a heavy weight to carry, but there was also a long overdue website overhaul that took far longer than I’d ever expected. ⠀⠀For a brief window back in mid-summer it seemed the covid restrictions were easing a bit, Dad’s health was stabilized, the site rebuild was complete and I could see daylight at last. We ventured south for a quick visit so pops could see his grandkids, enjoyed a much needed anniversary date with my wife, and even heard a live piano player on State Street in Sant…

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California Responding to a Global Crisis

A plein air landscape painting of a busy day at La Suens beach in San Clemente on the Orange county coast of southern California

Yeah, this is a big one we’re going through. But we’ve gone through others. This is how global crises look here on the southwestern edge of America. ⠀⠀I arrived to visit my father after a series of strokes left him housebound to the home where I was raised in Long Beach. It was decidedly un-edgy suburbia, but we’d still see Snoop buying shoes at the mall, and during Rodney King riots we saw pillars of smoke through the living room windows. It’s not that different from the home where he was raised either. Straight outta Compton you could say, but Compton was just another suburb …

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Repeater

A plein air painting of the Fort Rosecrans military cemetery and the San Diego skyline on the coast of southern California

Repeating patterns everywhere you look. Some patterns we wish we could break. Some patterns break us instead. And some patterns touch the heavens as her clouds roll in on those darker days. Not this day. This day was bright like the eyes of a child whose father makes it home alive. The man in uniform called me by name. A quick hello and he continued down the path. After he’d gone and for another while after that, I puzzled how he knew my name, trying to place his face in the graveyard of my faded memory- but he was nowhere to be found. Wrong graveyard. He was in the here and now as he came b…

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La Novena

A plein air painting of the Ventura Mission and aqueduct fountain on the Southern California coast

It’s good to have an exit plan. Sometimes it’s a quick exit out the backdoor. Sometimes it’s a longer game, like a sea captain who plants Norfolk pines wherever he lands should his ship’s mast be burnt by pirates or broken in a storm. And the exit isn’t always what we think. One exits a life of hunger by stealing horses. One exits a life as a thief and turns to religion. One exits a house of religion that weaponizes faith, and instead turns to love any and all in the streets outside. And one exits their life in the end knowing they were one that answered the call because they knew wh…

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Right Before Breakfast

An early morning landscape painting of deer grazing on a coastal meadow at sunrise on the Northern California coast

I’m not a “morning” person, I am however a “whatever-magic-is-in-the-light-in-this-particular-place-right-now” person so it worked itself out. Just the sight of these deer grazing along a beachside meadow beneath a rising sun aroused these dry bones from the body bag and back to life. It was such a moving scene, I was surprised whole whales weren’t emerging from the scattered bones buried in the sand as well. They didn’t though. Whales are heavy sleepers.

Slip and Slide

A plein air landscape painting of a trail crossing a landslide on a remote and rugged coast in northern California

I don’t know if anyone has ever painted from this vantage point, or ever will again. It’s over 10 miles from the nearest road. The logistics of getting here, along with all of one’s painting gear, are not easily solved. And once here, I imagine most would shy away from painting a barren rockslide, but to me that was the magic of this painting. This fire-swept wilderness is one of the most geologically unstable stretches of coastline in California (hence, no roads). It’s a harsh environment, but therein lies its charm and beauty.

Right Before Lunch

A plein air landscape painting of a trail through a coastal meadow on the far northern coast of California

A view that never gets old. I actually painted from this exact vantage point 15 years ago. I titled that painting Right after Breakfast and figured that I should revisit that spot and see what happens, so that’s what I did… right before lunch.

Right Before Dinner

A plein air landscape painting of a rocky point on the far northern coast of California

Just after arrival, I snuck this one in just before setting up camp. And the voices chimed in as I painted. “I’m just a bump on a log” and “I’m just a bird on a rock”, and “I’m just a blade of grass in the wind”. Yeah, me too, I thought. But “I’m hungry” is all that I said.

The Gamble of Art and Culture

A plein air painting of the Casino building at Avalon Harbor on Catalina island off the coast of southern California

They call it a casino, and yet aside from placing the riskiest bet known to man – betting on art and culture – no gambling has ever taken place in this building. When it was built, Vegas wasn’t much of a thing yet, and the word “casino” was still just an Italian word that means “gathering place”. And so it was the gathering place for art, music, performance, film, dancing and culture in general in this small island town.

Tower of Song

A plein air painting of the Chimes Tower overlooking Avalon Harbor on Catalina island off the coast of southern California

There’s a tower that watches over the city here and has been tolling its chimes on the quarter of the hour between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm since 1925. Unless Jani Eisenhut is feeling musical. I’ve heard that this lifetime local hops in and and plays whatever she wants on the organ’s chimes, whenever she wants. What a beautiful freedom. Two things. One, she is my hero. And two, we should all have our own tower of song in which to play for the town whenever we please. These paintings are mine. I hope they’re ringing clear to wherever you are right now.