About a year ago, I spent a week in San Diego painting with my friend Wade Koniakowsky and wrapped it up with a show in his gallery. It was a hot week, and sometimes challenging to find the motivation. This was at the end of a long day in the bright sun as the afternoon finally started it’s turn into evening. The tide was high, and a largish swell was running with just two surfers out front getting pummeled for our entertainment.
I set up just up the road from Wade to paint this little bend in the cliff capped off by a scraggly stump of a windblown cypress hanging on for dear life- probably in a tree’s version of a comatose state dreaming of a life in Big Sur.
A group of guys walked by, tattoos, wife-beaters, socks pulled high, beanies even though it was still fairly hot out. They were stoked on the painting. Well not so much the painting itself I reckon, they seemed to me like the sort of crew that doesn’t encounter plein air painters too often, so I think they were just stoked to see a real life hipster version of Bob Ross doing his thing out on a cliff in the wind. They were so jazzed they gave me a cold beer out of the paper sack one of them carried. Heroes.
A short while later, Wade was finished up with his painting and he walked over with his wife and a friend who had brought more beer, and… this is key… wait for it… Chips and salsa. Oh my. I don’t even care how this painting turns out anymore, this might just be as good as it gets right here right now.