I’m obsessed with the plant life in Southern California. I even unintentionally had a bedroom with a palm tree beach mural when I was in high school. It wasn’t Southern California, probably French Polynesia or another island paradise. But I’ve always loved palm trees and associated them with Los Angeles, even though they’re not technically from there.
Palm trees feel like they belong in California – kind of like I do.
Los Angeles felt like a magical place to me before I’d ever visited or lived there. I remember watching beach related-movies in humid, sweltering Louisiana summers and longing for this ocean paradise. I visited L.A. for the first time in 1995 when I was in my early 20s, the summer after my brother died and a few months before I started dating my first husband-to-be. I was in heaven. I loved seeing it in real life.
I had no idea at the time what this city had in store for me. That someday I would write a screenplay and be so motivated to make it come to life that I would eventually call Los Angeles my home.
My romantic comedy never made it to the big screen, but it went on its own journey through hands and eyes and revisions, just like I did.
My life changed because of L.A. The pressure of life in this town working in movie marketing burned my fire for screenwriting all the way out. My first marriage went up in the blaze too. But after crawling back to Seattle on New Year’s Eve in 2005 and finally extricating myself from my ill-fitting first marriage, I gave Los Angeles another chance in 2007. My work life once again tarnished my love for the city, but on the plus side I met the love of my life.
When I moved back to Seattle in 2008, I spent a very long time reprogramming my nervous system. I didn’t feel completely better until after our son was born and I finally went to see a psychiatrist and began taking medication for severe postpartum anxiety. I should have been taking medication much earlier in my life, but at least I started at 40. Along with Zoloft I learned how to meditate and spent time addressing lifelong patterns and sources of anxiety. It was a lot of work, but so worth it. Art was initially (and still is!) a form of meditation for me.
I didn’t go back to visit Los Angeles until 2011, before my son’s first birthday. There was a street art exhibition at MOCA. I had been longing for L.A. before then and it was the perfect reason to plan a trip. I went to Palm Springs in 2012 and 2013, and spent time in Los Angeles again in 2014 and 2015. Then I took a California hiatus until I took that trip to Venice Beach alone in February of this year. Even though I only visited a handful of times since last living there, Los Angeles still had a hold on me. In fact, there have been several times since leaving that I would have jumped at a chance to move back again.
THE SEA AIR MAKES ME FORGET THE TRAFFIC.
In July my husband and I spent a week in L.A. when our son was at skateboard camp in the desert. We split our time between two Airbnbs — one in Silverlake and the other in Santa Monica. I had a chance to look back on my past in this city and notice how I was soothed during the more tumultuous times.
As we traveled from east to west, I watched the busyness of East L.A. and West Hollywood morph into the visual spaciousness of West Los Angeles. I recalled how it felt to drive from my apartment in West Hollywood to Point Dume in Malibu on the weekends. I could see why the west side must have felt so comforting to me in contrast to my crazy work life. The things I thought about California when I was a teenager were the things that I reached for to soothe my anxiety in real life.
I remembered reading a book about “slow living” when I was mentally dying in L.A. I craved the ability to SAVOR. The anxiety I felt in my work and lifestyle was tremendous. But I still found moments of peace in pockets of Los Angeles. Things about the city that I adored helped draw me out of my day-to-day.
One day as my husband and I made our way from Santa Monica to Malibu I began thinking about the art that I have made so far. Where do I see California in my previous work? Abstract seascapes, for sure. A small collection of prints that I created after my trip to L.A. in 2015. Several one-off paintings and commissions.
I realized that I had a huge source of inspiration that has been calling me my entire life that I haven’t fully inhabited and expressed in my own artwork.
I want to consistently bring the spirit of “my California” and the vibe of “soothing summer vacation” into my work. I want to offer you a sense of calm, serenity, and peace through my art. A place of respite. A retreat.
During our trip I stopped and photographed beautiful cacti and Spanish-style architecture that felt “California” in my mind. I was drawn to sage green and reminded of all the desert colors and minimal mid-century modern houses that I’ve been collecting on Pinterest for years. Succulents. Neutral palettes. Rough stucco. Polished concrete. Crystals and coffee near the beach. Richard Diebenkorn. Space. Waves. Salt air. Slowness. Bougainvillea on white stucco with bright blue sky. The sensuality of time.
All of these things make up my California.
Now when I think of L.A. I think of the things that soothed me in the city. Not the marriage that was destroyed there or the overbearing nonstop pressure of the work that I chose. Not the unsettled feeling of returning to live there again alone. But the joy that I felt when I realized that the love of my life was sitting right across from me. Seeing L.A. through his eyes, along with experiencing my old favorites with him. Driving through West L.A. to Malibu. Palm tree textures. Sandy beach cliffs. Pacific blue. The architecture and plant life against clear blue skies. Canyon succulents. Inching through the Hollywood Hills. The ten-degree drop in temperature when you drive from east to west.
That’s what these paintings represent to me. My California.
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