Bolsa Chica Towers
November 6, 2009
Here is a new painting of the life guard towers at Bolsa Chica. The image is oil on canvas and measures six feet in length. I remember seeing this view before moving to Indiana and wanting to paint it. I was fortunate to come across the same scene again this year and particularly so because, almost all of these towers have now been dismantled and replaced by new ones. They were literally being torn down as I was completing the painting.
This painting was completed entirely from firsthand sketches and color studies done on location.
Here are a few samples of sketches that I used to construct the larger image.
Salton Sea
January 12, 2010
Here are a few pieces that I worked on over the past week at the Salton Sea. My grandparents have a beautiful home there in North Shore and we have been making trips out there since we were children. I believe this landscape is one of the most unique and visually striking in California. The light is brilliant and the landscape sun-bleached, it is full of decaying man-made structures set in vast spaces, and the area has a recent history of major transformations. The mirror-like sea produces some of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen and creates an amazing sense of deep space due to the plane of the water that is often dead calm like a sheet of glass from immediate foreground to distant background. The light also creates some of the most interesting color sensations at different times of day and in changing weather conditions. I believe this may be due to the reflective quality of the sea along with the bleached-white landscape which allow the viewer to more easily distinguish the actual color of light which may be more easily masked in a landscape filled with higher saturated local colors.
Many of the works shown here still need to be touched up in the studio. The first few works are a more sustained drawings and paintings requiring several days on location and the last are a series of small quick sketches focusing on momentary lighting conditions (most done at evening or sunset).
Salton Sea Palms – 18″ x 24″ oil
Path to Beach – North Shore – 19″ x 22″ charcoal
Salton Sea Harbor – 24″ x 16″ – graphite pencil
