Artwork Notes & Backstories


Not My First Rodeo

06/24/2016

This was the only painting I painted today. Oh, I had plenty of time to do another one, maybe even two, but I hadn’t explored this particular piece of coast before other than a quick surf check that consisted of a total of 5 minutes in the carpark below before moving on to seek a more sheltered location.

Today, I had all day. These trails weave all over the hills providing views of the ocean and lessons in history, scattered with WWII era bunkers at every knoll with a commanding view. For years, many uniformed eyes must have been stationed on these hills staring out at this view, scanning the blue waters for anything out of place. I don’t know if the view ever got old for them, or if they considered it just one of the perks of their otherwise often uneventful job assignment. 

Either way, I spent the whole day wandering around taking in these views and almost didn’t even paint this, but as late afternoon set in, I figured I’d better get to work.


Steam Driven

06/18/2016

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.


Above the Lookout

06/16/2016

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…


Timezone # 3

06/10/2016

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.


Odelay

05/28/2016

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


Sabbath Day

05/27/2016

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


Back East

05/25/2016

First crack at the desert. Furthest east I’ve been in a really long time. No waves, but digging the morning color palette all the same.


Moonlighting

05/24/2016

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.


Hobo Lady Giving the Finger to a Freight Train # 1

05/23/2016

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…


Chatting With Suess #2

05/20/2016

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


Chatting With Suess #1

05/20/2016

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


Boulder Dash

05/10/2016

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?


A Hope and a Future

04/20/2016

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.


Ephemeral Records

04/15/2016

At high tide that rock with the trees on it is an island, but at low tide you can walk right out to it. Over 20 years ago I ventured out to it with a friend, our minds set on climbing up to the top of it.

Except neither she nor I were the climbing types, we were just a couple of wide-eyed college kids, checking out this great big world that we were supposed to make sense of real soon.

We approached the base and made our way to the north, then to the south then back again, looking for some non-death-inducing route up the vertical side. After a few false starts, we surrendered and made our way back to the beach.

As soon as we reached the sand, we looked back and saw a couple of people climbing down off the rock. Their fluid movements made their descent look effortless. As we stood there watching their route, we realized it was a young couple, not much older than us, who were oddly... not really wearing any clothes?

Ok, she wore some tiny bikini bottoms, and a jacket that she took off and gave to him once they made it off the rock and back on to the ground. But that was it. No shoes, no shirts, no pants. Just a couple of nearly naked hippie kids making this daunting climb look like a stroll on the beach.

We watched in amusement, from a respectful distance, and after a quick discussion, we decided that we would just wait for them to wander off back into the forest from whence they came and then make our way back out, and follow the route they took. After all, we had jeans, and shirts. We even had boots on. We could do this.

And we did.

Going up was not hard at all now that we knew what line to take. Making our way all the way up and over, we enjoyed the afternoon up there lounging on the grassy meadow that looked out toward the slowly setting sun.

We sat there watching the white trails drifting out from the various rockstacks, and shallow waters where the waves churn the ocean into a thick foam. We began to see them that day as ephemeral recordings of the ocean’s rhythms, songs recorded on the water, every set leaving a thicker trail, and the calmer moments a barely visible line. The record player spinning at the speed of the ocean’s current.

Seeing the tide had turned, it was time to leave or else we’d be facing a pretty good soaking trying to get back across the tidepools to the beach.

And yes, in case you were wondering, we kept our clothes on the whole time.

Remember I said we weren’t the climbing types? If we had been, we’d have known that climbing down is a much more difficult challenge than climbing up. We discovered that shortly.

The upper portion wasn’t too bad, there were plenty of tree roots to grab hold of as we made our way down the eroded hilltop on our way to the steeper rock face below. That rock face itself was fairly easy to climb as well, consisting of solid rock with lots of cracks and features to provide good hand and footholds. The zone in t…

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Higher Education

04/05/2016

My favorite part of painting this one wasn’t painting at all. It was watching my home-schooled 13 year old daughter charging the waist high lefts out there all alone, figuring out the lineup, waiting for sets, eating it, making others, and just generally getting after it. Ok. Carry on…


Primarily Speaking

03/18/2016

One of my favorites from my “From Scratch” show. Easy to overlook, but symbolic of my whole approach to art. Flowing water vibes and a nod to the three primary colors I use. Every painting I make uses just red, yellow, blue and white. Every black, brown, green, gray or whatever is mixed individually from those same primaries. Keeps things simple, and keeps the colors connected.


Body of Water (The Red Door)

02/07/2016

Prologue Never, have I ever, painted live at a church // In these halls where language like an eagle soars // Hunting an explanation but seldom willing to explore // Beyond the war that leaves words stripped to their core // And the tension left behind that gives us sometimes something more // Than the eagle’s lifeless prey giving one last lurch // No, I have never painted at a church // At least not inside one // Or with permission // Thanks for having me // It’s good to be here // This year // 2024 years ago tonight // I wasn’t there, neither were you, things to do // Mostly laundry // Dingy gray rags, smeared with chocolate and mud, add some crimson detergent blood, they come out white like the tops of the clouds after the flood // Dressed to the nines, you made it to church on time // Good job, modern man… kind // You’re looking good in this temple // Have you ever seen a house of God quite like this? // A temple court // A basketball court // Yet bearing one another’s likeness // Yes, basketball // Basketball is people // Just like church // Paint them both with the red flags of the nations // And watch their colors drip and bleed // Down bright green leaves beneath a hot Tibetan sun // Their colors run // With ice blue prayers down a white mountain stream // How can this be? // It’s color theory and I know it doesn’t sound right // But yes // Red // Can indeed // If everything’s right // Red can indeed make white The Red Door I: Face Thyself I won’t bore you with all the color theory // But there is something you must know // Before we go // Any further // Into the light tonight // Where it’s the presence of all colors // And not their absence // That makes the purest white // Every potential, every wavelength // Present // In the brightness of the whitest light // But tonight? // I am here to paint // With words of reflection // And when it comes to reflections // To the color of objects // To our own complexions // To the shimmering of flesh and blood // To the material world that merely reflects the light it does not comprehend // Here, white is something different // Here, where all potentials collapse into one outcome // Here, white is void // White is absence // White is the emptiness between all colors // And here on this reflected side of light // There are three // A trinity // Blue // Yellow // And Red // Every color we can see comes from white and just these three // White the dove, white the light, white the wool of the lamb // Blue the sea, blue the sky, blue the water behind the dam // Yellow the flower, yellow the submarine, yellow the sun on the corner of the child’s page // Red // Red the door, red the rum, red the rust on the bars of the child’s cage // Red, the color of salvation // Red // Red the door // Painted with the blood of the passover lamb // Oh Death // Pass over us // Oh God // Deliver us // Let all the colors of this temple // That is our ver…

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Reclamation

02/07/2016

Written on April 22, 2020

Painting at the Jambalaya was always a wild time. A small space with a loud sound, and excited music fans moving with abandon, meant that my spot to post up was on the floor directly beside one of the speakers getting my ears blown out and going with the flow of knocks and bounces from dancers all swirling in one collective rhythm.

And with all that going on, I’d watch these unplanned visions emerge from the canvas as I swirled paint along with the moment. A gas mask, discarded, lying in a shallow puddle with fresh spring growth emerging. The mask no longer needed. But why not? Because there was no one left to need it? Or was the time of need simply over? I wasn’t thinking this through while painting, there wasn’t time in that high-octane environment to separate thought from action… There seems to be rusting metal nearby. The water acidic. But the sky blue. A single bird reflected in the glass of the mask flies overhead. I saw it emerge like Noah’s dove that returned with a branch in it’s beak. A sign that we’d soon be able to get off this blasted boat we’ve been stuck on during this 40 day storm. The time to rebuild would come soon.

Holy moly. I miss that stuff. I know a lot of you do too. There is nothing like good live music and the feeling of being caught up in the moment.


Shoebox Series XII

January 1, 2016

Recent commission, but a solid throwback to 2008, when the first 8 paintings of this series were published in the Surfer’s Journal (Second County South, vol.17 #3).

I don’t work from photos all too often, but this series is an exception. The idea isn’t to recreate a perfect photo (waste of paint, just print the photo already), but rather to use the grainy, off kilter shots that surfers and their buddies have taken and saved in a shoebox (or envelope, hard drive, etc…) as mementos of their surfing lives. These moments were meaningful enough for them to stash away, so I reckon they speak volumes more of our real surfing lives than any number of idealized candy coated plastic hors’d oeuvres served up with palm tree umbrellas on platters of tropical blues.

These gritty snapshots just become the jumping off point for each painting, attempting to find something transcendent and universal in each image. This one became a reminder to hold your line when incongruent worlds collide.

*Commissioned as a gift for the surfer in the piece. Hint, hint. I do these upon request.


Sunday Skylark

January 1, 2016

A recent studio commission. I reckon if I’d tried to paint this one on location standing in the middle of PCH, I’d likely have ended up dead, hospitalized, or in jail before finishing. It’s no secret that I prefer the Studio of the Open Sky these days, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate the quiet simplicity of the home studio where one can paint anything that comes to mind without even leaving the house. But I ramble…


Chasing Gold

December 24, 2015

It’s funny. Here is one of the major epicenters of California. You’d think that, given its importance to the state, I’d have spent a lot of time painting this stretch of coast.

I haven’t. I’ve mostly avoided it, to be honest. It’s hard to find parking. It’s stressful. It seems to be one of those areas where people will walk right over you and not think twice. Especially if there’s a celebrity nearby. And there often is.

The most troubling part of it all is that it leaves you very few choices. Adapt, or be trampled. The aggressive side of our human nature seems tailor-made for places like this where sixteen lanes of speeding metal spiral their way around this basin in a mad rush to get down the drain.

Drive in at night for best effect. Go a little faster. Turn the radio up. Marvel at the police
helicopters shouting orders at the moon. Laugh when it resists arrest.

Love it or hate it, this is also California.

When I was asked to create this painting for the California Gold Vintage Surf Auction, I
knew I’d be keen to redeem the coast here from the stereotypes that are so common… and so commonly true. I wanted to show another side of this coast that I love.

The hills outside of the city are breathtaking, and while much of them are owned and
divided among the millionaires, they are largely undeveloped as well. These open space Old Testaments tell of the way things have always been. The moon rises and sets unimpeded out here, the same as it always has. And while the city is full of dreams and ghosts, busy chasing gold in the fast lane, the rabbit trails outside of town are paved with it.


Chipps and Salsa

December 20, 2015

Honored to be selected as the official event artist for the 2015 Luau & Legends of Surfing Invitational coming up later this summer on August 9. Every year a new artist is commissioned to create their own variation of the event location, Scripps Pier in La Jolla, CA. This incredible event has been running for 22 years to raise funds for UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center. Here is what I came up with for this year’s piece, proudly dedicated to my sister Heather recently lost to cancer.


Just Before the Fog Never Quite Burned Off

11/20/2015

Plein air from yesterday. Left my brush roll in the studio and had to makeshift with some random brushes dug up in the crevasses of my van. Then hiked up to this spot and went to setup and realized I left my canvas in the van, by the the time I walked all the way down and got got back up here the fog had only gotten thicker, so I had to just noodle around with the foreground for awhile. The forecast called for sun sooner or later. Maybe it was later, we left before then. But yeah, finally the fog lifted just enough to see the beach across the harbor and I was able to lay this one out and had it all blocked in, then sat around waiting, eating sandwiches, pestering my painting buddy Steve Taylor, just waiting for the weather to really shift. Finally had to go for it as it was, slapped it together and called it a day. At least it never rained.


To Air is Human

11/15/2015

Written on April 21, 2020

The name of the band that played that night I painted this was Terrapin Flyer if I remember correctly- a Grateful Dead cover band. I never was all that into the ol’ GD, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate their music, so it was a ton of fun to hear those familiar tunes played loud and live as they should be. I was in the back of the hall painting with my back to the stage so I never really saw them up there, I was just absorbed in the movement and music and the somewhat troubling scene unfolding on this canvas before my eyes. But the band did a great job and from where I stood and how I experienced the whole thing, Jerry himself may as well have been up there.

But that was before this wave of fear and death began to sweep over the entire world. Looking at this painting now gives me the eebie jeebies. Why can’t I just paint happy trees all the time? What undercurrent was this tapping into anyway? Was this art imitating life, or is this life imitating art?

Either way, here we are now. My heart is breaking for all the live music that is just not happening anymore. As an artist, of course I am concerned for my livelihood in the face of the hard years to come, but then then I think of the musicians severed from their audiences, let alone any income from the gigs they used to rely upon. How long will it be before shows can be booked again? Even if the stores and galleries are re-opened, won’t large public gatherings be the last thing to remain banned for a much longer time? And even without all this, there wasn’t there some legal mess of a new law regarding gig workers as employees that was looming over the entire live music industry here? Dark days indeed.

I miss the music.


Water’s Edge

11/13/2015

Painted in the midst of a whole herd of landscape artists, several of whom I’ve looked up to for years, so I was stoked I didn’t botch this one, even though it is a rather odd composition. I really only chose it so I could work in the shade of the rockstack behind me, which also came in handy to hop on and cling to once or twice as waves washed up across the narrow berm between the rock and the water’s edge. Never got my boots wet, but the rising tide did force a higher ground relocation at one point.

On another note, have I ever told you guys about my giant van? I love it, room for everything, art junk, surfboards, wives, children, you name it. It’s great. The drawback of having so much room is that it gets full of all sorts of things that occasionally rattle loose from their moorings on the bumpy road home and cause all sorts of ruckus and mayhem back there. On this day it was a heavy tripod palette tray that took flight and punched a L shaped gash into the sky on the right side of this painting. It’s been patched and repaired now but if you look close it’s there to see. Just glad it was a clean tear instead of a long smearing scrape through the wet paint. That could have been unsalvageable, as it is I reckon someone will still dig it, even if it’s just me.