Artwork Notes & Backstories


Nowhere Else to Go

05/04/2021

Sometimes there’s just nowhere else to go.

You might be the raindrop drifting freely from a cloud, your flight abruptly ending in earth.

You might be the stream gathered from many mountains rushing down the valley locking into every twist and turn, hypnotized like a teenage race car driver, your mad dash halted by the edge of a cliff and suddenly you are a raindrop once again.

Or you might be the thermal energy stored up and released in the wind and transferred to the ocean as you march a thousand miles, flinging water molecules in a great circle behind you as you run at the pace that your slow decay calls for until one day it all comes crashing down and you meet a steep beach beneath a waterfall and in your final breath your exhalation sends water droplets into the warm air to become part of the atmosphere and eventually yes, a rain drop.

Or you might be me grumbling along a tourist coral herded like cattle until you reach a fence across the trail cutting your trip short and forcing you to stop in your tracks and paint the scene from where you stand, damn the stinkeye you get from the occasional tourist who is certain that your sprawling art setup is hogging the only photogenic spot on this wickedly shortened trail.  I tend to be a water person, I flow around things rather than push through, always seeking the path of least resistance, letting gravity pull me along, but just like the rain drops, sometimes there’s just nowhere else to go.


Sorry Not Sorry

05/03/2021

So this was different. There's a really great beach park 6 miles north of here that I hadn't painted for awhile. I was on my way through the area and thought it would be fun to return and see what I could do with it after a few years of pushing my art process a little further along. I had the idea to hike to a small bluff just north of the park and explore for a different view from over there. I made it about ten feet from my van and then had an idea.

I recalled reading recently that you could hike to the lighthouse 6 miles south of the park at low tides. I didn't say I had a good idea. But I did have peanut butter and jelly sandwich just before setting out from the van so I figured I'd be good to go and off I went on a whim. Just to see how far I would get.  You know.

The tide seemed favorable, so I just kept going, and going, and going. All the way to the end of the beach. Now I didn't read anything too closely, I just thought I saw that I could walk to the lighthouse and when the beach came to an end at a sheer cliff, the only route to go any further was up a trail past one no-trespassing sign after another. I couldn't be sure I was doing this right, but I recognized the name on the sign as belonging the previous owners of the property and so I figured the new owners had some deal with the state worked out for access and just hadn't removed the signs yet. Sounds good, right? I thought so too.

So up the trail I went and over the bluff, marching in broad daylight right up to the turning point of all of California. Just before ascending the knoll was another gate of sorts, with new signs, this time from the Coast Guard saying that only authorized personnel were allowed. I'd come this far to see the light house that I was sure that I read I was allowed to see, so yes, authorized I was. A bit of an odd feeling, tromping past one sign after another with creeping sense that I'd made a wrong turn or missed something somewhere.

But up I went and checked out the whole scene. Didn't see a single person out there. Desolation row. I took some photos of the lighthouse itself but the wind was beyond next level and I wasn't having that, so I settled on this view from a shaded and sheltered spot in front of some old living quarters on the back of the knoll, looking due East! It was a view I had not expected to paint this day, or any other anytime soon.

I had to work exceedingly fast as the day was getting long, the tide was coming up and I had to jam 6 miles back to the car on foot before dark since I was just parked in the day-use spot. I was hoping for a burger at the park store too, but I had a sinking feeling the grill would be long cold by the time I made it back.

Tired and half-broken from the high tide rock scrambles, but proud to have two dry boots after numerous close calls, my tired body smiled as wide as my happy soul as I raised my feet and ate my second peanut butter and jelly sandwich of the day in my van before moving on.

Post-edit:
Later on I read a little more about the hike to the lighthouse. I was supposed to stay on the beach at the lowest tides and see the lighthouse from below. My bad. Sorry, but not sorry. It was an amazing day and my conscience was clean on this one.  Ignorance can be beautiful like that.


Cottage Industry

04/30/2021

Hot exhaust fumes hardening into tar deposits hanging in the air over the snow cone machines where the tourist buses come to die and pour out their guts just short of the hospital where elderly cottages are kept on life support by the steady IV drip of short-term rental vacation deposits.

This place is bought and sold to the masses as a glimpse back in time to an older California.

Except the older California didn’t have a gift shop.

I just came to paint and move on. It really is an adorable little cove though.


Jacob’s Ladder

04/29/2021

This pier is condemned. Structurally damaged. And the scene here beneath the shadow of its condemnation is… interesting to say the least. Police patrols. Dealers. All manner of today’s American riff raff squaring off against the sunny California dream.

Let’s call this man by the stairs Jacob.

In the biblical narrative, Jacob was a deceptive manipulator out for his own gain. He’d stolen from his brother repeatedly and now was fleeing in fear for his life.

We have no idea what bad decisions brought our Jacob to the pier here on this day.

“And he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.”

Our Jacob sleeps with his head on the concrete.

“And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth…”

Ours is a cement stairway with metal handrails.

“and the top of it reached to heaven and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.”

And ours is the top of the pier where couples in love stand and take in the cool salt air, because when your bed is the stone of concrete wherever you lay, and you have made some bad decisions and maybe even burned some bridges with your friends and even your own family so now you have nobody to help you in your loneliness and despair, well… the gulf that stands between your sad state and that of a couple in love on a pier in the sun may as well be the chasm that separates heaven and earth themselves.

And sometimes it is the Jacob’s of the world that God eventually chooses for the greatest things.

Don’t ask me why.
I have no good answers.
It’s easy to cast judgment.
But it’s a lot harder to be right.
You never know where greatness lies.


Just Before Sunset

04/28/2021

One of those summer evenings that make you just feel like life could always be this way. It can’t. But in the moment, maybe it sorta can.

I painted this while watching one particular section of reef where wave after wave peeled across in perfection.  I couldn’t finish this quick enough.

I caught one gem of a wave just before the sun set, a roller that passed under the outside reef and was setting up nicely just where I was hunting. The rest of the pack was further in and as I faded and stalled to line up the wave for a speed run when it stood up on the reef I heard someone screaming behind me. Had to turn and see what the fuss was and it was some guy on a longboard that I’d already passed by as I wove through the crowd, he must have turned and paddled in behind me and now was trying to call me off this little beauty. Nope. The effect of his yelling was counterproductive for him as all it did was cause me to stall a bit longer than intended and then promptly stuff him in the whitewater as I turned up and into the bending wall before me. It was a racetrack to the end, and when I finally came through as the wave slowed up again, he was nowhere to be seen. Sorry buddy. But not sorry at all. That was a fun one.

The only thing I really am sorry for is talking explicitly about surfing right now. I generally try to avoid this sort of thing. I don’t know, it always sounds pretty silly. I guess that’s because it is. You can’t take things too seriously on summer evenings like this.


The Boulevard

04/27/2021

I came with a plan.

The plan was to paint these sculpted arches and coves and the sea at work around them while ignoring everything else. Forget the palms, forget the houses, forget the sun and the sky, forget the boulevard, and forget it’s name along with my own and just get lost in the weathered sandstone and rhythms of water and paint.

But I also came with a van. With a roof platform. And four other artist pals. And a cooler full of ice cold beer.

Next thing I knew I was up on the van painting, well, everything.


Capital Punishment

04/26/2021

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 massive photo of her grandpa Mel on the wall hanging in one of the hotels down in the harbor. There he stands to this day, grinning, shirtless, holding behind him a redwood surfboard that must have weighed more than any of his 4 children at the time.

I recall asking him about the harbor that was built here that ended the days of the “killer”, and he seemed confused that I asked him if he was sad to see it built and ruin such a great surf spot. He said flatly that the harbor was the best thing that ever happened to this place. I wasn’t about to push this any further with him. A matter of perspective I suppose.

It’s a beautiful headland, and a beautiful harbor at that. I just couldn’t help but hint in this painting at what once used to happen when large swells marched into this cove before the breakwater effectively stopped them in their tracks.


The Royal Treatment

04/25/2021

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 painting it, I realized that all the art I was supposed to deliver was still in the van and they must have thought I was the biggest hack of an artist they’d ever seen. “Yeah I’ve got the prints, how about some food and beers first?” and “yeah, I’ll be right back with the art” and poof, I was gone. Never trust an artist.

All was well and good when I returned though, I think they were so relieved to see me back and deliver the goods that they went right ahead and fed me again. The royal treatment indeed.

It wouldn’t be wrong to mention the restaurant here would it? I highly recommend The Shore Grille.

Hiding in Plain Sight

04/25/2021

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 glares at the guard and tells him to take his hand off his car as though he’s the boss himself. (It’s a nice ride, and he keeps it spotless.) The suddenly off-gaurd guard removes his hand, stands up straight, and my buddy blows right past him and heads past the clubhouse to his usual spot, and makes his way quickly down the bluff for a fun session.

Places like this hide in plain sight, existing squarely between two worlds. The elite and the illicit. The billionaires and the bankrupt and all that lies between. 

And I hid in plain sight while painting this. Out of bounds and over a roped off area, sneaking a view of this peak, in clear view of any hired staff who may or may not care that I was painting where I was.  Only one way to find out. I went after it fast, laying a sketch at breakneck speed, so that if I got the boot I’d at least have enough started to get ‘er done later. 

This would mean a lot to it’s eventual owner, a surfer who pioneered this wave that had long been considered unrideable. He rejected the blatant territorialism that was familiar to the north and south of this place, inspiring the next generation to guard the spot with aloha and skill instead of zip codes and fists. My friend above was part of this generation and he rallied the crew to have me paint this as a gift of gratitude for their respected elder. It’s an honor I can hardly describe, and I hope it brings back a million good memories every time he looks at it.


South by South

04/19/2021

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

04/19/2021

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 way down to a gap in the barbed wire fence that I spotted passing through the previous evening.

I'd wanted to explore this zone in the past but had been met with barbed wire, no-trespassing signs, and poison oak encroaching all over what might have been a footpath behind an abused portion of fencing. There's times we face challenges that we must dig deep to meet. That's when we see what we're really made of.  In this case I dug deep and found an excellent reason to go somewhere else. I don't recall the reason, but it was pressing, let me tell you. Otherwise I'd have ventured boldly onto that sketchy poisonous path in a heartbeat. Ahem. Yes.

But I told myself I'd come back another day and this was the day. In a fortunate twist of fate, I was greeted this time by signs stating that the trail was open to the public during daylight hours. And through use the oak had been beaten back into a much more manageable submission beside the path. I should have grabbed my gear right then, but I got so excited that I charged down the path driven by curiosity and coffee and made my way out to this vista greeted by poppies and a sweeping view up the coast.  Stumbling on this scene after being denied in the past was like living through my own personal rags to riches story.

Sure, I had multiple commissioned paintings I needed to get done today, and sure, the fog had lifted and mostly burned off so I could have made a mental note and come back for this after being responsible and getting my paid "work" out of the way first, but I'd already left this place for another day once and I wasn't about to do it again, so it was off to the van for my gear and back again.  A good way to start the day.

Also of note: came across a big fat snake in the grass on my way back out the second time. Probably just a garter snake of some kind, but he was a thick one. I try to tread lightly out there anyway, but after seeing this bugger I tried my best to float over the trail instead.


Twenty Twenty-One

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

05/22/2021

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 at large doesn’t care much for us either.

The house in the distance is the local U.S. Coast Guard headquarters on Humboldt Bay. They’ve saved a lot of lives over the years when people found themselves in the wrong place at sea.

I’d never painted this iconic building on the bay here even though it’s just down the hill from my home, and since this painting is being auctioned to benefit Humboldt “CASA” it would make sense to include a “house”, so I figured this was the time to make it happen.

But the real deal is that just like the Coast Guard is always there and ready to help us when we find ourselves in trouble at sea, so the folks at CASA are doing something just as heroic for kids who find themselves in trouble in life, without family, and in a world that doesn’t always care. CASA is there to advocate for these kids when nobody else is stepping up. And that is worth honoring.

—
*(CASA stands for Court-Appointed Special Advocates- and is made up of volunteers who are everyday people appointed by a judge to speak up and advocate for abused and neglected children in court.)


Nosebleeds

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

04/23/2021

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 (where they still exist) and the nightly news on TV, it's hard to escape.

The day after I painted this I ate a bowl of cereal at my uncle's house in long beach and there on the front page of his morning paper were photos of this place, surfers being swallowed whole with no chance of escape. I recognized one of them specifically as a ride I had witnessed while painting this one.

Speaking of photographers I probably wouldn't have gained this particular perspective if it wasn't for one of these photographers. I wandered the entire beach on my arrival, the first time I'd been here in a very long time, and definitely the first time I'd scouted a painting here. I was drawn to this further vantage point that looked across the harbor and still caught the action out front in this gladiator pit of a surf spot.

As I was setting up near a lifeguard tower I got to talking with one of the photographers who was using the tower for a shooting platform and when I complimented him on his choice of vantage points he told me there was plenty of room up there if I wanted to paint. One thing I try to avoid when painting is setting up in a spot where I might get booted out before finishing and that was my concern here. Knowing the area well, he explained the lifeguards wouldn't be using this tower at all today and that was all the assurance I needed.

And indeed he chose the best seat in the arena as far as I was concerned. Look him up: Jeremiah Klein (@miahklein). You'll be stoked.

After he left there was a steady stream of photographers that made use of this platform as they made their rounds documenting the action. It's definitely one of the more unique ocean arenas in California, and up here in the nosebleeds section of the stadium we could see it all. One day I'll have to come back and get something that focuses more on the warping beast of a wave itself, but for my first crack, I was pretty stoked to come away with a painting that tells a bit more of story.


Irish Coffee

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

03/17/2021

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

03/16/2021

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

03/16/2021

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

02/13/2021

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

02/04/2021

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

01/17/2021

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 opened up and began overflowing with ideas. She’s wisdom personified as the divine feminine in the book of Proverbs. She’s the classical ideals of truth and beauty that we only see in glimpses, forever out of our mortal reach. She’s the one Dylan sings about in She Belongs to Me (although from his lyrics I don’t think she belonged to him, or anyone else either). She’s the sea itself. She’s a mirror held up to our soul as we wrestle with the oft-used archetype of the mythical mermaid. She’s all of those at once and more.

⠀


Cloud Theory: 1969

November 1, 2020

Woven Recollections from the Return of One of Italy's First Surfers, 50 Years Later

I’ve long thought it would be interesting to explore combinations of longer format story-telling with my art in a more intentional way. Back in early 2019 an opportunity finally presented itself. The only problem was that it would require flying to Italy. If you know me, you know I’m not a traveler. Not like that. I can drive all night and all day on Highway One, but never make it to Italy. This rattled my program. I’d have to finally break down and get a passport.⠀ So in late 2019 I traveled to Italy with a surfer I'd only known long enough to drink two beers with. It was his first trip back to Gaeta, Italy, since 1969, and what might prove to be his final opportunity to see the country he fell in love with all those years ago. The details of his story emerged throughout the trip as we navigated the unfamiliar waters of the Mediterranean hunting for waves, and navigated the narrow streets and alleys hunting for cannelloni (a pasta dish that was common in Gaeta in 1969). We were mostly unsuccessful on both accounts. But this was more than just a trip to Italy, it became clear to me that this was a story that was meant for me to tell.⠀ Along the way I got to know this man well. During his time in the US Navy, as a lonely surfer peacefully stationed here during the Vietnam War, he was unknowingly among the first to bring a surfboard to Italy and surf upright along its shores. He wasn’t the first to surf there, and doesn’t think of himself that way, although his time surfing there pre-dates all the recorded history of surfing in Italy that I’ve come across. ⠀ But there's a lot more to all of us than any three-paragraph introduction can convey. This is my written portrait of possibly the first known surfer in Italy, and how our paths briefly merged together just before the world fell apart in 2020. This is the testimony of a life fully lived and a man facing his own twilight gracefully. This is a travel tale of two clueless Americans. This is an homage to the Italian spirit.⠀ This is the story of my friend, Dwight Harrington...  
► CONTINUE READING

Another Barb on the Wire

October 30, 2020

3 days. One family of 5. One campsite. 2 children lost (only temporarily). 7 miles hiked. 6 paintings completed. 3 paintings I wanted to paint but was thwarted by barbed wire. 1 global pandemic making things awkward. One long and awkward poem to show for it all...

I. Going Nowhere

Another Barb on the Wire
Hours to days
To months and soon years
We sit between these walls
Going nowhere
Slowly
Trapped in the microscope
The giant eye upon us
They locked us down
We loaded the van
A quick escape
Our desire
Another barb on the wire

 

 

II. Fair Wages

Stretching the legs
The will to live
Denied by the barrel
Of loaded guns
Pay to play
All the way
To the cemetery
A reminder that in this life
We all receive
The same fair wages
Both the great and the small
The honest and the liar
Each another barb on the wire

 

 

III. Spoke Too Soon

Screeching tires
Come to a stop
It's called camping
When your tent is a Ford
Frisbees and beer
Appear
Just before we discovered
The bookstore is in the hospital
On life support
And our youngest would not
Read another word
Until the new day dawns
We stood in the belly of the whale
And circled it seven times
As the dusk bled into the dawn
Setting out at first light
To fulfill our obligations
To the stars who spoke to us
But in our reply
We spoke too soon
And now we patiently await
The lifting of the clouds
Ever higher
And it's another barb on the wire

 

 

► CONTINUE READING

Better Places

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

September 27, 2020

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

08/11/2020

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 Santa Barbara. It nearly brought me to tears just hearing a musician making music for humans again. We were distanced, we were cautious, but like the first shoots of green after a long dark winter… it was beautiful. ⠀
⠀
Driving back the next morning, a speeding white truck passed us on the right, veering halfway out of their lane and onto the shoulder, only to collide just ahead of us into a parked Caltrans work truck. I braced for impact, hoping to get through unscathed. The truck flew into Amie’s side of the van, which forced us into another car on my side. All I could think is that Amie was gone. When I finally regained enough control to ask if she was ok, and she said yes, well, it’s weird to say one could wrestle and steer a completely wrecked van onto the shoulder with joy, but that is what I did. ⠀
⠀
The next few weeks were a scramble of insurance calls, finding a new van, ripping all the good stuff out of my old van and swapping it into the new one. My painting platform was a conundrum until we found out the Atlas Vans shop was across from the tow yard who could handle the installation quick and easy. ⠀
⠀
This was painted for them on a bright morning in Ventura. With the help of their crew, along with my family, and even an art collector in Ventura that stepped up and spent a whole day helping with the van swap- I’m ready to roll again. ⠀
⠀
But I think I’ll stay home awhile and work on some studio paintings for awhile instead.⠀
⠀
*Title is from a sticker on the back of that yellow van


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

08/09/2020

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 back then. ⠀
⠀
But Grandpa wasn’t raised in one of these typical suburbs. The West Covina home of his youth may be surrounded by cookie cutter homes now, but to this day it refuses to conform. There’s shade everywhere, as anything that grows out of the ground has been allowed to just keep on growing. A huge tree stands in the yard beside the house, bikes lean against it, rusting into permanence at the end of the dirt driveway. ⠀
The scent of oranges has now been lost in the wind. But there were once acres of them. Fresh-squeezed juice was just a fact of life. Kids laughed and screamed and rode their bikes in every direction as far as they wanted down the dirt roads between the neighboring orchards. On hot summer days, this would get old and they’d complain that they were bored. They would wish that something would happen here, and figuring that it never would, they imagined a different life beyond the orange trees.⠀
⠀
And what a different life it became. 100 years of madness unleashed. World Wars. Vietnam. Race Riots. Fault Lines. JFK Assasination. Nuclear Reactors. War Games. Freeways wide enough to give every global crisis it’s own clear lane and yet… Road Rage. Meth. School Shootings. Gang Violence. Police Brutality. It goes on and on. ⠀
⠀
Everyone lives on the edge of something here, and some days we just need to go to the beach.⠀
⠀
Or in my dad’s case, maybe a cup of coffee and a walk around the block. ⠀
⠀
It’s not quite paradise.⠀
⠀
It’s just California responding to a global crisis.


Repeater

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

08/08/2020

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 back up the path.

“The most beautiful place in California”, he called it. It certainly is unique, and while I’ve seen a lot of California and wouldn’t have necessarily chosen that description, I can see his point. Especially after learning that his grandfather is here, and his father, and his brother as well. Beauty is often a measure of meaning.

Still trying to place where I knew him from, he’d become deeply familiar in those few minutes of conversation, I finally break down and just ask him plainly where we knew each other from.

A puzzled look. We had never met before.

But wait, didn’t you call me by name when you passed by earlier?

“Can you repeat that?” He turns his good ear toward me now.

Earlier when you walked by here, didn’t you call me by name? You said “Good morning, Matthew”?

“Must have been the wind, I guess”

We bid farewells and that was that. An awkward encounter in a place of profound importance.

High-fives to all the veterans out there today.