“Lifestyle Studies” of Laguna Beach painting series.
My most recent series of oil paintings accompany ten 9 x 12 in paintings reflecting the lifestyle of coastal communities.
This series reflects the first selections from my sketchbooks. I chose to paint moments, places, and forms directly from my ink sketches. My selections revolved around canvas size, boldness, storytelling, and relation to my day to day sights and experiences.
My personal favorite is Below Sea Level. It is the first of the revolving painting above. It captures the fluid expressive qualities of the ocean, yet the bold line work establishes stillness. I find this to be an interesting contradiction to the nature of the ocean’s constant movement perpendicular to this surfers moment in time on the wave. The color palate draws into attention the type of wave as the sun is glistening off the shallow section over reef in the pocket.
The next painting, is of my friend Jackson playing guitar. We were sitting jamming up at his place in the Santa Cruz mountains trading off playing songs on his electric guitar. He introduced me to open tunings on guitar and since then I have been writing my next album primarily in DADF#AD, CGCGCE, and DADF#BE.
The third painting, Across the Room, displays a moment of daydreaming staring across the room at someone of interest. I was sitting at a coffee shop sketching various figures and I could not help but notice a guy who was clearly interest in a girl but was too nervous to go talk to her. The coffee shop had red flowers on each table offering a unique vantage point of the two. I find it to offer interesting movement across the canvas as well as direct the audience into the mind of the mind gazing across the room.
One of my favorite beaches in Laguna Beach is Three Arch Bay. It is desolate compared to the other beaches and offers swell, cliff-jumping, snorkeling, and volleyball. This fourth painting is a scene from the channel that washes through the rocks. Its a core memory as it reminds me of spearfishing along the reef. Back in high school, my friends and I all volunteered to teach special needs to surf. One time after the camp ended we went to the rocks and decided to venture out towards the back side of the big elephant shaped rock. We had to walk across on the side of the channel and when we got the the little tide pool a huge wave knocked us off our feet as we slide on the jagged edges of the rocks. It is a good laugh nowadays and something ill never forget.
The final painting is titled People. The faces are from an abstract sketch composition from sitting in a restaurant in Maui. It calls to attention the figure in the bottom left unaware of what is going around them due to the phone in their hand. Often times we are more comfortable diving into our phones than talking to new people and making connections. You never know what the person standing or sitting next to has to say and they may become someone worth getting to know.
