Painting
Gouache painting on paper at Heart's Desire Beach in Inverness, CA
View from Telegraph Hill, earlier oil work, sold
Near the Sutro Baths in the Sunset district of San Francisco, hides a sandy staircase to Sutro Park. Gouache on paper
Room divider/folding panel with Arthur Mathews inspired California landscape. This artwork contains elements of fantasy, with the flora of the coast, dry coastal hills, and craggy Sierra Nevadas all in one vista
My version of Monet's water lilies, painted from a reference photo I took at Monet's very lily pond in Giverny, France.
The view of Mt. Diablo was right behind me, but I found this gate and path towards the hidden hills very charming. oil on canvas primed with orange paint.
View through the trees of Point Reyes National Seashore on Mt. Wittenberg. This area suffered a fire from the lightening complex in 2020, luckily most of the old growth survived and underbrush was what burned. An earlier piece.
Painted on the same day as the gate and path painting, this is a view of Mt. Diablo from Castleridge Trailhead in Walnut Creek, CA.
These special flowers are bush lilies. They bloom gloriously once a year towards the end of Spring in the Aids Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.
Mt. Orient is a very small mountain, or a hill to be more precise. It lies on the 7 sisters ridge and coincides with the Robert Frost trail in Pelham, Massachusetts near Amherst, MA.
This run down barn was a fantastic subject at Old Borgas ranch in Walnut Creek, CA. Once a cattle ranch, Borgas now is open to the public and hosts lots of old barns (if you like painting those).
A quick gouache study based on a reference photo of the side of highway 1 in Florence, OR. Beautiful blackberry bushes and foxglove line the highway along the Pacific Northwest Coast.
The lesser known Mt. Sutro lies behind UCSF Parnassus campus in San Francisco. These California Poppies were on full display at the grassy knoll at the top of this hill in the Spring of 2020.
Ever been to Nepenthe in Big Sur? The writer Henry Miller was a frequent patron and ping pong player at this oceanside terraced restaurant. These poppies had the best view of coastal redwoods cascading down to the Pacific Ocean.
View from my old apartment in Nob Hill of San Francisco. Featured from this west facing window is Mt. Sutro, The Holiday Inn on Van Ness Avenue, and Sutro Tower shrouded by fog.
Along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, sits a craggy knoll hosting live oak trees and mustard grass in Spring.
Nonotuck Park along Broad Brook and Nashawannuck Pond in Easthampton, MA. This moment was during a January thaw and the patches of snow melted to reveal now brown fall leaves along the river bank.
Eucalyptus trees line this historic farm in Fremont, California. This farm is now open to families and homes chickens, pigs, goats, and more animals for kids to enjoy.
Commissioned by a close friend, this view through the bay trees during sunset on Point Reyes National Seashore was created from a reference photo that I took while hiking with the friend who commissioned the piece.
An attempt to flatten the picture plane and bring clover and ivy into the foreground. The challenge here is overlapping leaves and applying shadows correctly.
Cloudy days at Ocean Beach make for more consistent colors when painting. That moment right as a wave crests to break holds so much suspense.
A dramatic sunset in the Eastern Sierra near Twin Lakes and Buckeye Hot Springs in Bridgeport, CA. This was prior to hiking Benson Lake Loop with my partner.
Calla Lilies made a congratulatory appearance on my birthday in the San Francisco Botanical Gardens. Though these flowers look white, it's important to use grayscale to account for folds and shadows.
Another 'wall of green', bringing a dense collection of morning glory flowers up to the foreground. Though the blooms are a dreamy purple, the wilted flowers turn a luscious striped magenta.
Early Spring along the Pleasanton Ridge when the grass is still bright green, and the miner's lettuce covers the ridge top like a blanket.
This area in Point Reyes was hit hard by the lightening complex fire in 2020. Now known as the Woodward fire, the area is quickly recovering, hosting many bushy plants and purple and yellow lupins.
This magical morning walk led me to a path in the Aids Memorial Grove at Golden Gate park. The sun streamed through the bay trees after an overnight rain, igniting parts of the path and beds of bush lilies.
Seal rocks through the trees at the top of the bluff at Sutro Baths. Seal rocks get their iconic white tops from cormorant droppings. I have never actually seen a seal at seal rocks, but the name is more charming than cormorant poop rocks.
Influenced by the dazed and confused vibe of Humboldt county, this view through invasive Pampas grass at Trinidad State Beach marked the start of my journey to blend geometric abstraction into my existing landscape painting style.
A tangle of kelp washed up on Limantour Beach, CA. While painting this piece I often got confused about where the spaghetti string tendrils were intertwining.
From a series of California coastal tide pool paintings. The longer you look, the more you see in these cold pools.
A stylized version of a sea anenome. Also in this image: periwinkles, coralline algae, and browns (seaweed).
View of barges and Vancouver Island in West Vancouver in November.
The Matt Davis Trail is a very popular and steep ascent near Steep Ravine in Stinson Beach, CA. These stairs became incredibly challenging to depict compared to a trail.
This artwork departs from my usual attempt at depiction and begins to incorporate abstract elements into the seed pods of the grasses and in the trees in the background.
Up in Tuolumne Meadows, the Castilleja flowers bloom pink in late June. I put my camera down in the grasses to get this photo of my friend sitting in the meadow.
Along redwood lined highway 35. Here I add an accent of geometric abstraction with yellow and red horizontal lines in the middle ground.
An earlier painting along the Charles River bank at The Cover in Auburndale, Massachusetts. The freshly fallen leaves and rotting leaves in the water below made for a semi-abstract painting, though it was attempting to depict reality.