The view from our 51st floor balcony at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. Another plein air piece- I didn’t touch it up and just left it rough. I like it this way.
Painting in Vegas
Leaving Vegas at the crack of dawn, laden with heavy, heavy painting stuff. Shephard Fairey mural in the parking garage of the hotel.
Coronado Beach, San Diego ,California – landscape painting
A bright sunny day on the beach in Coronado.
Santa Ynez California Landscape Painting
The rolling hills above Santa Barbara, dotted with California oaks and livestock.
Industrial Landscape, San Diego
A midcentury industrial building off Convoy in San Diego. I love this area with its acres of asphalt and modern architecture.
San Diego Urban Painting
Morning in a cloudy alley in Hillcrest. Old houses and recycling bins- two of my favorite things to paint!
Orange Tabby Cat Painting
This friendly cat showed up one sunny morning as I was painting in North Park.
Painting of the Louvre, Paris, France
Yes, we are off to Paris today… just kidding. We are actually off to Las Vegas today. I’m tagging along when Mike goes to the Splunk conference because I want to do some paintings of the desert. And if it’s too hot, I might just do some paintings inside the fake Venice, which is air conditioned. And I might do some paintings of the fake Paris which is also in Vegas. It’s Vegas; who knows what I might do.
I haven’t been to Paris in a decade but I filled up a notebook with drawings last time… the proceeds from this painting go directly into my Paris Or Maybe Italy plein air painting trip savings account. 😉
San Diego Industrial Landscape Painting
An industrial building off Convoy in San Diego. This is by our favorite Korean restaurant (Grandma’s Tofu), but there’s never any parking so we park by this place. I really like the street- mid century warehouses and industrial buildings and acres of parking lots full of big trucks and delivery vans.
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout recently published this piece about her love-hate relationship with San Diego in Newsweek. (Matthew Hall of the San Diego Union- Tribune responds here.)
I don’t want to be scathing about the essay, since I think what she’s trying to say in her graceless way is that her suburban childhood blinded her to the quiet charm of this place. And I think that’s fair enough. A lot of people probably feel that way about wherever they grew up. They want to get out of there and try someplace different. Then they eventually move back to their hometown and never stop complaining about it until they die.
I wanted to mention Armantrout’s essay because my entire body of recent work deals with the “here-ness” of San Diego.
Armantrout says San Diego has no charisma, no sense of place, has a “blankness.”
But she’s wrong about that.
Gertrude Stein was equally wrong when she said of Oakland that “there’s no there there.”
There’s a there everyplace. Every painter knows this. If you think there isn’t, the thing that’s barren is not the place you live; the thing that’s barren is your imagination.
Santa Barbara Beach Painting
A cool walk on the beach in Santa Barbara in a cloudy, grey morning.
Cottage Liquor in Hillcrest. This is where I go to buy 90% of my Lotto tickets.
This is as far as I got with the painting plein air before the sun got too fierce, around 9:30 AM. I’d already had to move the easel once (the date palm went behind the building when I did) to get under a tree… one of my first painting teachers told us, paint in the shade, and she’s absolutely right.
Painting of University of San Diego
The University of San Diego on its hilltop, seen from across Mission Valley in… Pioneer Park? I think that’s the name.
I painted this on Labor Day in a perfect ocean breeze.
Sometimes I touch up plein air works in the studio afterwards, but this time I liked the painting the way it is.
Santa Ynez Valley Landscape Painting is for sale.
Sunny skies, golden summer grass, and deep green shade in the Santa Ynez Valley, near Santa Barbara, CA.
We spent a long weekend in Santa Barbara earlier in the summer, and I just discovered this and a couple of other paintings that I forgot to post. It’s a beautiful place.
We joined a wine club the day I started this painting up in the hills over Santa Barbara… and that wine shipment should arrive any minute now!
I just finished and shipped this commission to Kat Webster of Canopy Studio in New Orleans. She creates these amazing mid century modern cat lounges…
If you like cats, you might like my cat painting blog or my Cat Painting Etsy shop.
Georgia Street Bridge, San Diego Painting
From the southeast corner of University Ave, in Hillcrest, looking up at the retaining walls of the Georgia St bridge over the avenue. This painting was a long time coming. I started it last winter and pulled it out periodically since then, working, wiping off the paint, giving up for a while.
Most recently I made one of my feeble efforts to clean the studio and found the painting again and I thought SURELY THIS TIME I can finish.
