Writing

A different way to enjoy my work, through the written words, notes, and poems that pour out alongside the artwork, and sometimes all on their own…


An Unfamiliar Song

03/21/2019

This was the endpoint of my longest hike on this trip, 11 miles total, and it took me past several miles of coast I’d hiked and painted on a previous trip. On that trip, I thought I’d gone about as far as I could reasonably go in a day’s work of hiking and painting. But this trip was a chance to smash that mental barrier. I’d been out here hiking and painting daily for 4 days straight, so while my feet hurt, my body and mind began to love the new “normal”- especially if it meant seeing another corner of California for the first time. This hike also required hiking with a heavy pair of waders strapped to my pack to cross an almost waist-deep creek that had washed out the trail entirely. That was a first. Huge thanks to the crew at the research station and Dr. Dan for having me along, and letting me enjoy this place so fully. I wouldn’t have had a dry bed, hot food, or these borrowed waders if it wasn’t for you guys. Cheers! The hassle of this creek-crossing was offset by the knowledge that past this point, it was now exceedingly unlikely that I’d see another human being.

The bunkhouse that was the home base for the trip was situated in a long crescent of shore where from nearly any point on the crescent you can see both ends bending out to sea in the far distance. This was after a mission to reach the farthest end of the crescent to the east. Once I got there and climbed the hill that overlooks it I decided instead to keep going further out along the ridge, traversing another mile or so through high grass with no trail across the tip of this headland and getting my first look around the corner and back up on this unfamiliar stretch of coast. Like a song you’ve not heard before but instantly love, I wish I could have heard more, but with the rain in the distance and facing a long hike back to the station, I thought it was about time to stop walking and start painting.


Wish You Were Here

03/20/2019

Those two old barns standing together in this distant outpost reminded me just how much I miss my best friend, my wife, when I’m out wandering around on the edge of the earth. I hope to bring her back here soon. One of the nice things about this region of California’s coastline is that this once private land now is now National Park land, so when you encounter a barbed wire fence standing between you and the view you desire, the only concern is getting around or over said fence, and not whether the owner and their dogs might find you. Also there are no snakes hiding in the grass, which is hard to believe, but true in these parts. Double win. Good things come in pairs.


Island Time

03/20/2019

I sort of saw this one developing over a few days out here. First off, the evening light over the nearby island as the full moon rose was always a subtle delight. Secondly the poppies out here, only grow on these islands. Unlike the poppies of California that are very deep orange, or the poppies of Mexico that are bright yellow-orange, these island poppies are a two-toned mix of both. And thirdly while wandering down from a hill I came across a series of cow bones in the grass, finally crowned off with this skull. I made a mental note and came back for it on a clear evening. It’s not often such poetic elements come together in a line for a plein air painting, but with minimal editing, this is more or less what was there. Almost a Georgia O’Keefe inspiration in there, but mostly just a fun visual commentary on the passage of time.


Moonshine

03/19/2019

Painted on location from a pier on one of California’s offshore islands during a full moon back in April. We’d bodysurfed that right in shorepound on this very beach earlier in the afternoon. Super fun. I can’t imagine too many paintings have ever been painted at night on this pier though. Pretty cool eh? The moon changes everything. I’ve been drawn to some nocturnal paintings from a few of my favorite artists over the last few years and since getting out for a few myself I’ve discovered two things.

1. It’s a pain- it’s dark, colors are hard to see on the palette (and painting), a headlamp helps, but can be too bright, lots of straining to see, it gets a lot colder standing around at night.

2. It’s super fun.


The Apex of Spring

03/19/2019

Visiting this hard to reach outpost of California’s coast during the Spring Equinox after a few wet months, I was hunting not just new corners and vistas, but had wildflowers on my mind as well. Elusive creatures, they can be, I didn’t see as many as I’d hoped. But I did spot this little patch on my way past this point earlier in the morning at the base of a canyon named after another hunter, an apex predator. It would do just fine. Toward the end of this painting the weather shifted. I packed this one up quickly in a heavy, darkening wind and retreated back into the canyon from which I had come. 


Strata Various

03/19/2019

This headland took some serious work to get to. All said, this ended up being the furthest point reached on an eleven mile round trip solo hike, which required several creek crossings up to my calves, washed out bridges, wet sloggy socks, and by the end of the day getting soaked to the bone in a late afternoon downpour. I might not have painted here at all, except after hiking all the way up and over to the other side of this island and venturing along the coast as far as I could this was the point where the trail came to an abrupt halt. I’d have gone further, but this headland was daunting and would have required a seriously steep and sketchy backcountry mission to navigate up and over, if it was even passable at all. It’s a beautiful place, but perhaps more than just the beauty inspired this painting, I felt I just had to paint the place simply because I was here and could go no further. I’d reached the edge of what I could do this day. A truly rare painting of a truly rare place- has it ever been painted in plein air? Certainly possible, but considering the effort required to reach this point, I’d be surprised.


Prey For Rain

03/19/2019

Deep in this prehistoric canyon, I was watching the weather shift quickly as I made my way back to the cabin. I was still a solid hour and a half of hiking from dry shelter and warm food. A spattering of occasional raindrops peppered the hike with questions of doubt. Will I make it back to the cabin without getting soaked? Will the two wet paintings in my box survive a good soaking if the skies unleash? Will my wet socks matter so much anymore if everything else gets wet too? How much rain did it take to wash all the little foot bridges out earlier this year? How fun would a flash flood in this little canyon be? How can I pass this little creekside scene without stopping to paint it? That was the only question that mattered in the moment, and I had no good answer. So I stopped right there and painted it. A brief window of blue sky had me feeling pretty good for about 20 minutes. Then the dark clouds returned. Then the canyon wind started howling. Then the drops started falling again. I was pretty close to wrapping it up anyway, so for the second time today, I scrambled out of there pretty quickly.

Post-script: Yes, I did get completely soaked. Yes, the two paintings and this fresh new one all survived the soaking when the skies finally unleashed. No, my wet socks no longer mattered to me one bit once everything else was dripping wet too. I still don’t know how much rain it would have taken to wash out all the footbridges, but it was probably a lot more than today’s rain. And no, I have no idea if it would be any fun at all to get stuck in this canyon in a flash flood situation. Depends on the outcome, I suppose. Any other questions? I think that’s all of em. Unless anyone was asking about the deals I’m offering offering on my site right now. For that answer you’ll just have to go and check for yourself. 


Trifecta: Ticks, Wind, and Poison Oak

03/18/2019

I didn’t have to hike far from the cabin for this one, I just wanted to peak a little around the corner of the beach straight out in front. There’s a small hill that blocks the view here, so I made it my mission to get on top of this hill and paint from there. The afternoon light here has always struck me as special. But just because it wasn’t far doesn’t mean it was easy. I had to tromp up a steep hill with all my gear, slow-dodging poison oak, paint in a howling wind, perched on a steep awkward grassy slope, constantly checking for ticks after picking up at least one while wading through the high grass to get here. A perfect trifecta, if you will. Ended up working a bit faster than usual, just to get out of there, but that lends the piece a nice urgent honesty and I’m glad for it in the end.


Hold Your Ground

03/18/2019

I spent this morning drinking a bit too much coffee in the kitchen of a bunkhouse with a group of college students. Well not drinking coffee with them, I was just on a trip here with them. They had science to do, and science doesn’t care if it’s raining or not, so they were out counting species along designated transects to compile a visitor’s guide in the nearterm and add to the overall observations for future reference in the longterm. Or something like that. I was just the resident artist on this trip. At any rate, they were out there counting in the rain, so there I sat sipping away, watching out the windows for blue skies as the downpours came and went.

At last, the blue skies won out and it was time to go hunt a painting. I’d had my eye on this old Cypress tree that overlooks this bay so I went straight to it and went to work. During the course of the painting a few showers passed by, some getting pretty close. It was a battle of nerves for a tense while as the sky grew dark with one final band of showers that passed by a little too close for comfort. I was in deep on the painting and didn’t want to pack up, so I just nervously worked through it, holding my ground. The weather is a mean opponent in these games of plein air chicken, but in this case she swerved at the last minute and I was spared for the time being…


Distant California

03/18/2019

It’s not the California coast that most of us are familiar with, but good to know it’s out there. These old barns down at the bottom of this valley are no longer used, the sheep and cattle ranch ceased operations years ago. In some ways its sad to see this era come to a close, a page of history has turned and the story just keeps going forward year after year. Most often we see these pastoral settings replaced by condos and cookie cutter retail outlet centers and that is where the real sadness comes from for me in those situations- the steady march from natural beauty to udder mediocrity. In this case though, for the ranch in this painting, the end of its days brings no such sadness. It is in no danger of being paved over. It is heading the other direction. Even the changes that ranching brought to these hills are slowly being undone. Nature plays a long game, but her strategies are a joy to behold.


Water Under the Bridge

03/17/2019

This was my first day on a trip to this fairly remote piece of California. I wasn’t alone out here, I was a guest artist travelling with a group of science students from the CSU system. Right on arrival the group decided to jump right in to a 7 mile round trip hike to a prominent nearby point. I took off early giving myself a head start so that I could get the painting started and let them see it in progress, looking forward to the subsequent conversations- those kids always point out the tidbits of information so easily lost on me: the plant names, the geology at play, the fauna that dwell here, and how they impact the flora we see around us- always interesting things for a person who mostly just sees the world in red, yellow, blue and white distributed on x-y axis. When I reached the end of this trail at the destination point, I had to go around a corner to get out of the strong wind and that’s when I saw this cool little sea arch down below. I set up quickly and went to work, keeping my ears out for the group to round over the hill behind me. But on account of the steep hill and the strong wind, I never did hear or see the group and they never spotted me on my perch over this cove. We just went separate ways. Looking back I realize that I spent this entire afternoon hiking and painting surrounded by phenomenal natural beauty and never saw a single other human. Can’t say that very often, but out here I have found it’s not all that unusual out here.


The Onslaught of Spring

03/15/2019

Back in March I made the effort to immerse myself in this infamous superbloom* in southern California. I had so much fun painting these flowers the first time that I stopped on my way back through a few days later, on a weekend no less, and braved the daunting prospect of immersing myself into the onslaught of humanity that had arrived to see this spectacle of color. The intensity of the orange poppies was nearly rivaled and definitely complimented by the intensity of the spring greenery bursting forth from these hills. The Onslaught of Spring indeed.

Sidenote: This was a commissioned piece- already sold and delivered, I know there’s a few of you who were asking for more poppy paintings. I didn’t find as many poppies as I’d hoped on my last trip in May, so we’ll hopefully sort something else out down the line. Spring will come again. I’m sure of it.

*also known as “spring” throughout most of time


Movers and Shakers

03/14/2019

A quick trip to the southerlies of California brought me to this vista in search of a similar but different scene I’d painted for a friend a few years earlier. Apparently after some flood damage their place needed extensive work done and movers were hired to take all the necessary belongings out and store them while the work was completed. Not everything made it back though, the painting was “lost” along the way. Good taste, shady movers… that’s all I have to say about that. That original painting was also one that I never got a really good photograph of, so it’s double hard to see it go like that. But that’s neither here nor there.

Well it is here, this is the spot I chose for the replacement painting of the one gone missing. It’s right in front of one of those Sotheby’s mczillionaire ocean front homes. A realtor was showing it while I painted. I wasn’t much in the mood to talk to them, though I sensed the group behind me chatting and watching while I ignored them and sang badly. After they’d left the realtor came back and interrupted me to chat with a bit more intention. Turns out the couple buying that house wanted the painting. Now my friend who I was doing this for wouldn’t have minded if I sold this one and painted another, but in my mind I’d been wrestling with this painting for Pancho, not for some yahoo investor couple that would just as likely call the police if I walked up to paint near their house in the future. I told the realtor it wasn’t for sale. It wasn’t.

Some might say I should have offered it at some inflated price because of, you know, oceanfront zillionaires and all, but I wouldn’t anyway. I ask what I ask because it is fair. Games are for kids. I love what I do too much to play chutes and ladders with my livelihood. That game was never any fun anyway.


Just Past the Ice Cream Truck

03/13/2019

Right before heading down on this trip I started hearing about these epic poppy blooms and being a color junkie I ended up juggling my plans around to get to see this bloom in person.

I thought I’d meet up with my friend Wade Koniakowsky and go paint this place with him. Neither of us quite anticipated the madness of humanity here. Getting off the freeway to orange cones and sirens and traffic cops I knew this might be a little hectic. Deep breaths, and in moment of clarity I didn’t even try to park close, I just turned the other way and drove down the road until I was out of the madness and parked on the empty shoulder to wait for Wade.

But he was taking forever and I was impatient so I walked the mile up to the trailhead to check things out. I found two food trucks and an ice cream truck and mass confusion everywhere. The ice cream truck man seemed unhappy, which really bummed me out because ice cream is the opposite of unhappy. The mass confusion on the other hand seemed thrilled to be there.

I found a couple of other painters and chatted while waiting for Wade, who finally arrived and parked by my van, so I walked the mile back to meet him, let him borrow a pack to haul his paint gear and together we walked back under the freeway, past the traffic cops, into the mass confusion, past the ice cream truck and joined the procession of souls seeking the color orange.

Not too far in, and we found this bend in the trail and it seemed suitable to both of us, so we set up and basically chatted with strangers non stop for the next two hours while we painted.

All worth it. I don’t care how cynical and jaded we can get after seeing nonstop images of these blooms and hearing how overrun with people it can get. Sure, people can be a bummer, but I didn’t go here to see them, or even to get away from them. I came here for the color orange, in an intensity that nature rarely produces. Overwhelming. And wonderful. And never disappointing.


Headwinds

03/04/2019

This is the last painting I recall painting along our local coastline before the summer road trip season kicked in. I had recently rebuilt my painting kit to be lighter and fit on a smaller pack with the ability to carry multiple freshly painted still-wet stretched canvases hands-free on a single outing. This was the maiden voyage for the new setup. It performed quite well and has since been trail-tested (and off-trail-tested) all over California, from the border fence at Tijuana, to the Smith river on the Oregon border- hiking through terrain that would a have been a nightmare with my old giant rig and no way to safely carry a wet canvas, let alone 4 at a time.

This coast is so beautiful here in Humboldt, I sometimes wonder why I bother to leave it at all and why don’t I just paint here all the time? It really boils down to a lifelong passion for exploring the California coast. After all, that’s what brought me here in the first place. I’ve never had more fun in my life than in these recent years taking the time to put myself out there in the fringe places and walking off into the mist and returning not just with paintings, but with experiences of new places and the joy of revisiting old favorites. Still though, when it’s time to leave here and hit the road it’s like plowing forward into a mighty headwind. You have to really want it. The easy path is to just stay and paint these vistas here and keep it easy and sleep in a real bed without wondering about a cop tapping on the window of the van in the middle of the night.


Morning Gems

December 1, 2018

Much like with many of my paintings, there are no humans visible in this piece. To be fair, that’s not much of a stretch here as sunrise on this part of the coast is often a cold and lonely affair. But just because humans aren’t visible, doesn’t mean they aren’t part of these paintings. For me the landscape itself is a very human story, and if you’ve actually read my musings over the years, you may have gathered that just under the surface, my artwork is really exploring, celebrating, and honoring our human connection to these places I paint. The scattered ashes of loved ones, the wedding vows still hanging on the silent air, the reckless abandon of youth, the adrenaline surges of lifethreatening miscalculations regarding the immense power of natural forces… all of these and more are intertwined in our reactions to places that we know. Each of us brings a different set of memories, a different set of connection points to each place I’ve painted.

This painting perhaps more than most celebrates the uniqueness of each of our lives more than any other I’ve done. It does this through metaphor, the gravel on the beach, each of these bodies of rock are different, each unique, each beautiful in its own way, each reminiscent of yet another miracle of life living in these bodies of flesh and bone that we call our own, crafted from the elements of earth itself.

And some, if you look closely, seem to glow with their own light. It’s only the light of the sun passing through them of course, but it is their rare gift of clarity that allows the light to fill them and flow through for all to see. We cherish them and hold them near to our hearts.

And we’ll never forget the morning we found them, nor the night we lost them.


Sticks and Stones

10/30/2018

I had painted this same scene a few months prior, but only focused on the rock stack and ignored the view of the sweeping beach as it arcs its way around this bend in the coast. In the middle of painting this one, a tricky situation arose. My nose just started bleeding randomly. Maybe a bit dehydrated? It happens every few years and always unexpectedly. I saw drops of blood on the palette and had to act fast and dig up a clean paint rag (an old cloth diaper, they are the best) from my pack and hold it to my nose. There’s a chance this painting contains my actual DNA now. Kinda weird. Sorry if it grosses anyone out. It’s just life. And a reminder that our bodies are made of flesh and blood. Fragile like an ecosystem. Eventually unstable like an eroded cliff. We all fall back to the sea, eventually. On this particular day, I did not fall back to the sea though, hopefully my time is a long way off. But it was an awkward way to paint- holding an old cloth diaper to my bleeding face, while sorting out the colors of sand and water, sticks and stones…


Dividing the Rest

October 22, 2018

A fine line
Divides the pursuit
Of overwhelming joy
From sheer
And loathsome
Irresponsibility

The high tide line
Divides
The rest

Consider us divided
And
Conquered

Even the Spaniards
On the tall ships
Know…

Both victory
And defeat
Taste better
With a dash of salt
And lime


Book of Etiquette

October 22, 2018

Who wrote this book of etiquette?

All of the pages are blank
As though the ink has spilled right off the paper
Leaving us to write our own rules with pencils
And skin
And burning eyes

After reading from cover to cover we are left
Just as we were before
Somewhat crude
And still rather unrefined


Our Good Fortune

October 22, 2018

Even though she was royalty
We continued to stare
At the lines
Around
Her blue eyes
And at the
Shape of her
Trembling
Lips
That encircled
Her delicate mouth

Meeting her was
Our good fortune

She showed us grace
And mercy
We did not
Earn

Little did we know then
Just how good
The Queen would be to us

Or just how difficult
Fortune can be
For those
Who have received it


The Mountains Never Forget

October 22, 2018

The hills are burning
And we breathe the smoke
Of their exhalation

Second hand exposure
To long forgotten memories

The mountains never forget


Bigger Than It Looks

October 22, 2018

Hovering over the water
Weightless over the face of the deep
The storm rides silently off to the hills
To darken the eyes of the cattle
And drown out the country music

The light that remains
Clear and unfiltered
Falling from above
Reveals an orchestra of liquid geometry
At once carnal
Yet also divine
Each note the offspring
Of a passing storm
With the laws of fluid dynamics

We’re drawn to the symphony
The melodies ring beyond the hall
To the cliffs high above
Calling us to a quick dip in the sea before dark

But once inside the concert hall
We’re swept away in a mass movement
Of salty sweat and black leather
Nearly drowning in the mosh pit
Bruised, bloody, and broken

From there we glimpse the orchestra more clearly
Four awkward teenagers
And a mountain of noise
Who allowed these kids to take the stage?

It is here that we learned this law of the sea-
It’s always bigger
Than it looks from above


When our Day Arrives

October 22, 2018

By day they theorize, philosophize, and lay their eyes
On this predicament
From old lawn chairs
Behind a makeshift barrier of plastic tape

By night they await the higher tide
Under the spotlight
Searching for answers
But generating none

Once a proud vessel
Named for nobility
Now on the rocks without the gin
Or perhaps because of it if the wind spoke truly

Each morning brings a new revelation
Coffee and binoculars the psychoactive agents
Of this daily vision quest

She is a solar eclipse
Her shining brightness now darkened
By the lesser light

Shucked like an oyster
Removed from her shell of open water
She now sits waiting for the ocean to swallow her hull

The heiress watches on
A mix of rage and longing
As she carves an homage of color
To the one she once knew

All the while they watched this maiden work
And no one said a word

It is no different with you or I
While our voyages may end differently
Still every voyage must end
And we can only hope there is
A daughter by our side
To mourn and remember us when our day arrives

 

Plein air artwork of a shipwreck near Cayucos on the San Luis Obispo coast of Central California
MOURNING AND REMEMBRANCE

 

That poem is a true story. The boat that got stuck on the rocks here was still stuck on the day of a solar eclipse, and over a meal of oysters with an artist friend in the area, Colleen Gnos, I learned that the boat used to belong to her grandfather and was originally named after her brother. I told her I was thinking of painting it before they managed to get it out of there, and convinced her to come with me the next day and we stood on the bluff and painted while the captains came and went. I suppose I could have just written this plainly right off the bat, but the whole thing was too poetic to merely leave at that.

-Entry on August 24, 2017


Washed Away

October 22, 2018

We came to this mountain in search of gold
We’ll leave with pockets full of solitude
We speak to the wind
We are here now
Everything else is gone
The cars and houses
The monies and the media
The interconnected web of information that
Ties us all together
None of that can truly exist at all

We know because we’ve listened to the quiet
That raged so loud our ears bled
We know because we’ve stood on the edge
And peered over
And seen everything we ever held on to
Smashed against the rocks
And washed away
Only to be returned as the treasures of
Small children on the outgoing tide

Dream on, dreamer, but when you awake
You’ll find nothing here
And that will be all that you need


Our Father

October 22, 2018

Our father
Kept us moving
Even though
We stopped a bit too often
To read the signs
And ponder
Their meanings

When it was time to move on
We would often
Have to push with all of our might

Barefoot
On the rough pavement

Our father
Drove a Volkswagon