Girl Reading, Pacific Beach

"Girl Reading, Pacific Beach" 24 x 26 inches, oil on canvas

A while back, I posted my preliminary drawing for this painting. It's finally finished. The process involved a new method I'm using to help me include the figure within my new works.

But before I get into how I did the painting, let's talk about the why. Every painting of mine includes personal meaning, but I hope that the image resonates with the viewer in an archetypal way. I feel the purpose of my work is to depict my own story, but it's not necessarily important to understand in order to enjoy the work. When I was still a teenager, 18 years old, I moved out of my parent's house and lived close to this particular neighborhood in Pacific Beach. I spent most of my time in study, although I lived in the midst of a party town, and I somehow managed to stay out of trouble... honest! So this painting depicts the kind of ideal fantasy girl that I never met there at the time, a good girl engrossed in her studies.

As for how I did this painting, I was initially inspired when I was visiting the New York Public Library and viewed their WPA era murals... I wanted to do my own library painting. At first, my idea was to depict a girl sitting and reading under a tree, but as I went out in search of the perfect tree to use for my painting, I found this beautiful repetative long line of palms in the old Pacific Beach neighborhood. In this particular view, I liked how the long fence complemented those palms, as well as the long pose of the reclining figure I had in mind. These three elements somehow divided the piece into thirds. Then, I worked up a kind of classical composition creating a big triangle or pyramid as the overall center of the piece... do you see it?

As I transferred my drawing to canvas and began the painting, my friend, Aron Wiesenfeld, pointed out that the palms lining the background were a little too monotonous. I changed them in this final painting, so it does differ from my preliminary drawing.

Speaking of my pal Aron Wiesenfeld, I just got back from his opening exhibition at the Bakersfield Museum of Art... http://www.aronwiesenfeld.com/home.html

Drawing of a Girl Reading

This is my new drawing, "Girl Reading" 22 x 26 inches, pencil on white Strathmore paper. The photo of my drawing turned out a little bluish. *sorry* This is a preliminary study for a seperate painting I have started. As I began collecting reference around town for my own "library painting", I decided to go with the repetative pattern of the palm trees and the fence in the background. The neighborhood houses in the background are in Pacific Beach, an area here in San Diego where I used to live before I moved to Pasadena for school. Currently I'm doing a handful of summer paintings that take place in beach neighborhoods, if you scroll down a few posts, you'll see my painting of "Blue House in Encinitas". And I'll post my other new beach neighborhood paintings as I finish them too.

I was initially inspired to do my "library painting" when I saw some old WPA murals at the New York Public Library. They were painted in the late 1930's by Edward Laning (pics below).

The walls in the McGraw Rotunda of the New York Public Library are decorated with large paintings depicting the evolution of the printed word. In particular, I liked these two different paintings of people sitting under a tree and reading a book. And I do love to read myself.