The first art teacher I ever had used to always tell us that all art is a lie. I never really understood what he meant by that, but it sounded pretty neat and quite teacherly.
Generally, I gravitate toward truth-telling with my art and most inaccuracies in my paintings are accidents of omission. I’m just not one to paint every single blade of grass and individual leaves on every tree.
There’s an ancient text that repeats the theme that all men are like grass, referring to the brevity and fleeting nature of our lives on the face of the earth.
More often than not, I treat humans in the landscape as the blades of grass that they are, fleeting, ephemeral, just passing through for a moment before they move on.
Sometimes it lends to an eerie silent vibe in my paintings of places that should be full of human activity, but showing no trace of it except those features we’ve built into a more
semi-permanent state on the landscape itself- roads, benches, stairs, paths, etc.
This is one of those spooky ones.
That said, I’m not sure which is the bigger lie here: the complete lack of human beings on a glorious sun-filled afternoon here… or the sandbar creating ruler edged perfect waves from that outside rock all the way to the sand 200 yards later.
Neither of those ever happen.
Hence the title: Surf Check Daydream indeed.