Many years ago, I was able to live in Santa Barbara, California. Now, it has become an exclusive place reserved mostly for the very rich and famous, but in the 70’s it was still a sleepy beach town and I loved living there. For these many years since that time, I have longed to return and mostly have managed to do that with annual visits. Many of these were taken with my friend Susan, but last year my daughter and granddaughter managed to come along.

There is a great beachside restaurant at Hendry’s Beach where you can sit and look out at the ocean while you sip a margarita and eat fish tacos. Hendry’s is a dog beach so there are lots of them playing on the beach. As you walk from the parking lot, the path travels along an estuary that runs in from the sea. I have painted here several times and have always avoided painting the green, weedy foliage in the foreground because I wasn’t sure I could pull it off without getting crazy fussy. Somehow, by some magic, it was the easiest thing to paint in this painting and I learned a lot about loosening up and letting the painting almost paint itself.

Last year, my painting partner and friend Susan had the idea to go wine tasting in Sanoma County while I was visiting Northern California. in the process, we drove through lots of wine country with vines covering the rolling California hills. When the sun came out, it illuminated the vines and cast amazing shadows. That’s what stopped me when I took the photo that inspired this painting.

When I decided to make a painting that reflected my time there, I started with the photo I had taken of the vines on a sunny day. It had some strong shapes and the composition was decent. Initially, I thought painting it would be pretty straightforward. Sometimes, paintings do come easily but this one did not. I found myself eliminating elements and then adding in others. The colors shifted innumerable times as I worked to differentiate and balance all those greens. Finally, it all came together and I came away from the experience with a renewed appreciation for not just the finished painting, but for the creative journey I took to get there.

A sunny day in Mendocino is a gift. Many days along the north coast of California, the fog is so dense that you can’t see across the street. Some days it burns off in the afternoon, but there are weeks when it never lifts and if you want to paint, the only option is to learn to paint the fog. But this kind of day, when the sun shines from early morning till night time when it sets into the Pacific ocean is truly special. Colors that are muted much of the time, come alive.

I took a photo of this scene on a day like that. I know it was the light that got me. This painting is larger, and it took longer, not just to cover the canvas, but to get all the shapes, values and colors working together in a way that spoke to me of this place, not just this scene. The perspective on the house was particularly challenging and I ended up adding some elements in from my imagination to break up some of the shapes. When I look at it, I can feel the place and that is what I wanted more than anything else.

When I lived in California, I longed for Santa Fe and now that I live In New Mexico the opposite is true. I was born on an island and spent much of my early life near or on the water. There were contests among my friends to see who could get into the freezing cold water of Long Island sound earliest in the year. I never won that one but more often than not, I had the first sunburn and the blisters that went along with it. I moved from there to California in my 20’s and managed over the years to live in all the most beautiful beach towns along that coast From San Diego to San Francisco as well as places in between and beyond. One of them was Mendocino where I did a six month artist residency at the wonderful art center there.

This painting started with a photo reference but it is more imagined than anything else. I started with a drawing to study values and shapes and then did some color studies. I set up my easel near my computer and began painting after transferring the image to my canvas using a grid. I wanted to get it right! At one point I found myself being very fussy with the rocks and ended up with a muddy mess. I wiped the area out and thought I had wrecked the painting but instead of tossing it into the trash, I kept painting and stopped looking at the photo reference. To my amazement, I ended up with a painting that for me, really expresses the essence of this place and my experience of it. I didn’t realize it at the beginning, but I already had everything I needed to make the painting work. I just needed to let go and allow it to happen through me.

For the last several years, art making has been replaced by other things. Some visual artists who were isolated at home during the Covid epidemic made more art. I made less, much less. Nothing during that time made any sense to me and so I spent many, many hours watching television just to get through it.

I read a novel recently where someone described what “petit morts” or little deaths are and how they happen along the way to the final ending. I realized that my life, without art and travel and so many of the things I used to love had become a series of “petit morts”. It had been such a long time between painting every day, which I had done for years until now that I was afraid to start again. this is a journal of sorts to document my rebirth as a creative person, painter, writer and maker of things. I hope you will travel along with me and maybe be inspired to begin again.