Artwork Notes & Backstories


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.

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*(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.⠀
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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.

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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...  
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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

 

 

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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

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. ⠀
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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. ⠀
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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. ⠀
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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. ⠀
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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. ⠀
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But I think I’ll stay home awhile and work on some studio paintings for awhile instead.⠀
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*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. ⠀
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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. ⠀
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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.⠀
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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. ⠀
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Everyone lives on the edge of something here, and some days we just need to go to the beach.⠀
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Or in my dad’s case, maybe a cup of coffee and a walk around the block. ⠀
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It’s not quite paradise.⠀
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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.


La Novena

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

08/06/2020

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 what it was like to have their own calls unanswered.

On the day I painted this, I wasn’t thinking of reaching out to anyone and I had no plan other than to exit with a painting. This was mid-pandemic, the occasional couple would hurry past saying nothing at all beneath their masks- the distance being kept wasn’t only physical. It made for a quiet scene that in other times would be crowded with people enjoying a beautiful afternoon. The few that lingered here weren’t concerned about any of this. No masks, no distancing. Eager to talk through missing teeth. Curious about my painting… and what else was in my bag? Friendly enough, but opportunistic as they had to be living out on the street. I began to question whether my exit strategy was sufficient.

Then I heard a voice calling from the tiled bench where a large man sat just a few paces away. A crutch beside him, he was asking for help to stand up. His outstretched hand was filthy, who knows where it had been? But he wasn’t asking much, just to be heard and touched. And besides, my hands are never all that clean and I can never really know where they’ve been either. All at once I was the ex-padre who knew how it felt to have no one’s help. After joining hands and lifting him up, he moved himself a little way up the promenade and would repeat this again with several other passerbys. I had passed the test and made my exit a short while later with this painting to remind me of the time I met God on the street beneath the 9th mission built in California.


Right Before Breakfast

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

08/06/2020

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

08/05/2020

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

08/05/2020

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

08/04/2020

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

07/29/2020

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

07/29/2020

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.


Idylls of the King

A plein air painting of the view over Avalon Harbor on Catalina Island off the coast of southern California

07/28/2020

Did you know that King Arthur’s famed sword, the Excalibur, was forged here, and that this is the island where King Arthur himself passed away? Ok, that’s not true, but the little town tucked behind this little cove on this desert island was named after the island in that very legend, as recorded in the English poet Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King in the late 1880’s. I’m no king but this was a rather idyllic setting to paint an afternoon away, that’s for sure.