This painting gives a view of the beach at Corona Del Mar. The warm hues of the sandy foreground are reflected in the bright ochre of the peninsula in the distance.

A morning view of the hills surrounding the I - 5 freeway as it heads north from Los Angelos. A combination of warm and cool colors models the ridges and gullies of this rugged hillside.

Two boys and a dog on a small sailboat raising the sail and securing the lines is the subject of this painting. The boys represent my nephews
Willi and Lindsay Hoyt. The dog was made up.

The trail which surrounds Clark Park climbs to
a summit on the North side of the park. This painting records the landscape visible from the summit in late afternoon. I was able to capture the shadows on the hillside including the fading light on the trail below.

Deep Vista # 4. Coyote Hills. The warm reds of the rocks contrasts to the greens and violets of the vegetation and the shadowed slopes. The "castle" effect allows endless variations on this theme. All of these depended initially on either drawings or photographs or both.

Another beautiful spot in the Laguna Beach
neighborhood. The Yellow House stands out from other buildings not only because of its
bright color but also because of its classic design. Framed in a beautiful thick black frame with a gold inner lining.

I have always been attracted to bridges. Bridges have strong historical and romantic associations. Bridges both separate and unite. Castles had moats and moats had draw bridges.
In the Arboretum I set out to paint a footbridge. It was built over a brook close to the visitor center. It was not greatly used but as a painting subject it had several other obstacles. It was in a shaded area. Moving water is always a challenge to paint. The stream that flowed in a notch under the footbridge made it difficult to find firm footing for my easel. And the light is always changing.

And there were questions. Should I place a figure on the bridge? With so much attention paid to the bridge what should I do with the background? I explored these and other questions as I painted four versions of this painting- three were success, one not. Framed in a thick black frame.

Coyote Hills. The warm reds of the rocks contrasts to the greens and violets of the vegetation and the shadowed slopes. The "castle" effect allows endless variations on this theme. All of these depended initially on either drawings or photographs or both.

Framed in a light colored wood.

The view here highlights the steepness of the
hillside at Big Bend as it rises above highway 133 with its craggy rocks and clumps of pine trees as seen in late afternoon light.

Framed in a thick black frame.

A second view of the Back Bay at Newport Beach , this one with a starker contrast between the dark foreground and the warm clouds in the distance. I liked the cloudy sky,
the dark bluff, and the incoming waves.
Most of all I enjoyed the cohesion between the
spatial layers: foreground, middle ground, and
background.

An unusual study of intertwined trees branches
Inspired this rough copy.

This landscape began with pencil sketches done in Clark Park near my home in Fullerton. The challenge was to bring light into a dark area by letting the sky show through the trees in a few places.

A study of a small pond reflecting the warm colors of late afternoon sunlight. The quiet mood comes from the five interconnected horizontal zones of alternating warm and cool colors. From the bottom left corner of the painting these zones zig zag upward to a barely visible depiction of a crumbling wall, which seems to be the remains of the foundation of a large building that no longer exists.

A steep roadside path parallels highway 133 as it descends Into Laguna Beach. A few tiny figures to the right and represent other painters at work at their easels. Framed in a beautiful thick black frame with gold inner lining.

A rocky point with a few trees, warm sands, a distant cape. This view is much the same along the coast of Orange County, Southern California's beaches are among the best. The light is constantly changing to the painter's frustration.

The trail entering Clark Park from Rosecrans drops off suddenly on the east side of the park.
I simplified the scene to increase the feeling of
a disappearing path. The foreground elements - rocks, trees, the trail itself - are compressed in space to allow the background - distant hillside and late afternoon mottled sky- to open
up the space and suggest an abrupt drop off at the end of the trail. Framed in a thick black frame with a hint of gold.

Under the influence of German expressionism
and Bay Area painting, this crudely handled
painting of my first wife, Gail, tries to connect
the exaggerated colors of the face to the bright
shapes of the background.

A small boat heads out into the lake. The blue
water is divided by the wake from a larger craft. In the center of the painting is the redshirted figure of a man seen from behind (my dad?). He is standing erect in the prow of the boat while he surveys what lies ahead. In painting this I thought of my dad who in his own way was an adventurer. Framed in a light colored wood.

An impressionistic landscape where the central
sunlit peak can stand for Buddha among his disciples. Natural lighting derived from studies of the Southern California Coyote Hills scene.

The only traditional house in the Arboretum was once owned by a doctor. It is now a popular site for tour groups to visit. The attraction for me were the many gables and their highly intricate ornamentation.
Finding the best place to position my easel required several attempts. In the end I painted the building from three different vantage points, each favoring a different interesting feature. Capturing the complex shape of this Victorian building in the changing morning light itself a major challenge.

Coyote Hills in the Distance
Impressed by a beautiful group of flowers
in a nearby field, I returned to an earlier painting of Coyote Hills and modified it by the
addition of the flowers and a change in the source of illumination.

A play on Hopper's painting Sunday Morning.

Terry Houseworth found this great viewpoint from which to paint a bluff near the Muth Center at the Back Bay. I joined him late in the morning one day - too late unfortunately to complete my painting. The wind came up and spoiled the reflections I was working on. So I returned the next day to get them right.

Framed in a thick black frame.

The Franklin Avenue Bridge is seen from the
level of the Mississippi River, its counterweight
being a small tree on the opposite bank. This plein air painting was made from a site close to my home. Framed in a gray colored wood.

This somewhat expressionistic view of the warehouse district with its hot pink and yellow colors reflects the painters concern with the
alarmingly frequent fires that broke out in buildings not far from the artists studio.

Framed in a light colored wood.

A much enlarged jack knife with a slice of fruit are the subjects of this still life. The whole painting employs a thick paint. The idea here being to evoke the juiciness of fruit by the viscosity of the paint.

Framed in a light colored wood.

An interesting composition with the small
traveling alarm clock almost hidden behind
the glass of water. Thinking of modern
painters like Morandi and Diebenkorn. Framed in a light colored wood.

This is one of four flower paintings that used
the same composition but changed the lighting. The large violet shadow and its adjacent orange daisy blossom provide the key focus.

Framed in a beautiful silver frame.

A central steep cliff surmounted by a billowing cloud hovers over a depthless chasm while a row of sun-baked Eucalyptus trees frames the scene. Thinking of great early Twentieth California landscape painters - Edgar Payne and William Wendt.

So named because the rocky configuration seemed like a castle. I have probably made a dozen paintings of Coyote Hills, modifying the compositions with simplified shapes and adjusting the color to create a balanced painting remained the chief goal of this series.

Strong contrasts of light and shade define this plaza on Balboa Peninsula, Newport Beach, CA.

Frame in a light colored wood.

One of my more successful attempts to capture the movement of the ocean north of Hessler Park at Laguna Beach. Painting a moving landscape is one of the hardest things I have attempted. I started this painting, as I often do, with a small pencil drawing which demonstrated the opposing directions of the palm trees and the incoming waves along the curving beach.

One of the first landscapes I painted in Southern California. I was impressed with the
golden fields, the dense groves of dark green trees, and the sheer whiteness of some of
the stone cliffs. For this painting I used a combination of drawings and photos.

Coyote Hills. The warm reds of the rocks contrasts to the greens and violets of the vegetation and the shadowed slopes. The "castle" effect allows endless variations on this theme. All of these depended initially on either drawings or photographs or both.

View from hill looking South, Fullerton, CA. Painted in the first years I taught at Fullerton College, CA. 2000.

Framed in a light colored wood.

The trees are made up of strongly contrasting patches of color and form a diagonal movement into depth. While that and the diminished size of the trees sets up a movement in one direction; white waves both parallel and oppose the direction of the palm trees to create some visual energy.

.A soft evening light illuminates the unpaved area behind the buildings on Washington Ave.
Railroad tracks, wooden crossing signs, here appear as fragments of a bygone industrial age. The slender branches of a tree are all that remain of the fertile land on which the warehouses were developed.

A green belt of trees separates the sunny path near the top of the hills from the pond below. Above the trees the landscape fades to lighter shades of pink and violet.

Although I enjoy visiting large California deserts- like Death Valley - painting them is more difficult than making a study of a cactus garden at close range in the Arboretum.
The problem with making a large desert landscape is choosing what to leave in and what to leave out. How to connect the plants to each other, to the land, and how to avoid repetition. Although one could say this kind of problem could occur in any landscape, here it just seemed more obvious.
My solution was to open up the foreground and create a shallow “ stage” on which to show the twisting rivulets where the rain had carved up
the soil. In doing this the cacti were pushed to the sides. The twisting chanels left by the rain would be continued in the movements of the trees and clouds, thus connecting earth and sky in a swirling mass.

Diamonds and Ladders Series

All three paintings exists as Free Geometry. Composed of what appear to be cages, or ladders, or stairs, they suggest the influence of Cubism, although no reference was intended. Mostly they were an adventure in making paintings with an ambiguous sense of depth. Warm and cool colors are combined to into patterns and adjusted to create balance. Movement is suggested by diagonals; transparency indicated by changes in value; in other words these are exercises in basic design.

Framed in black colored wood.

The title says it all. Instead of the usual blue sky I have used a hot yellow with pink clouds. The dark blue and green create a unified pattern, uniting the foreground with the distant hills.

At Newport Beach fishing boats generally worked at night and returned in the early
morning. This painting shows a late return
fish unloaded, now preparing to leave.

Intense colors freely applied are intended to
represent the movements of water at night. The painting also satisfied my need to express
myself with the thick paint of Expressionism. Framed in a thick black frame.

A single female figure, seen from the back, seated on a sandbank, overlooking a body of water is the subject of this small painting. The figure, placed left of center turns towards the light; opposing this, the head looks
right into darkness and empty space. This natural contraposto brings with it a history of references to Western art. Framed in a light colored wood.

One more view of this well known painters’
site. The focus here is entirely on the path on the north side of highway 133. Shapes of clouds, the groves of trees, and the walking path have all been simplified to strengthen the overall composition.

My third attempt to capture the warm, sunny,
luminous quality of Newport Beach’s Back Bay as seen from a Southeastern viewpoint is the most successful. Twisting channels guide the viewer ‘s gaze from foreground into the depth of the bay where puffy clouds overhang a glowing horizon of violet and pink hills. This serenity seemed natural and appropriate to this
location.

Framed in a beautiful light colored frame, matted in white, and covered with glass.

Although this painting still represents Coyote Hills, it was the last canvas painted in this series and the most literal. The view across a somewhat open field to a settlement with houses and a barn. A large group of trees marks the middle ground, while in the distance rises a profile of the hills. The sloping range of clouds was painted as a contrast to the serenity of the rest of the scene.

Based on drawings done at site. The aim here was to use traditional observation to record a brightly lit street scene with some rich color and strong values.

The Family.
Painted in Monroe, La. in 1967, this painting won an honorable mention that year
In Beaumont, Texas. It shows my family - first wife Gail, and daughter Julie - at the zoo in a simple Pop art style. Framed in a dark brown wood.

A well worn subject. I admired the way Manet and others painted the floral still life and made it fresh every time. For me capturing the changing light was the key to success here.

This white tower is one of several older
structures to be found at the Fullerton Arboretum. It stands along an unpaved road
close by the Victorian house - now called the
“Hermitage House”. Partially hidden in a grove
of trees the tower seems an unusual building
in a domestic context. It may have been a water tower; it’s rectangular design and exterior stairs may have been added later
to harmonize the building with its neighbor.
In painting it I stressed the strong contrast between the white rectangle and the dark organic shapes that surrounded it.

Crystal Cove is a small painting which takes as its subject several buildings from the beach at
Crystal Cove and adds a pair of surfers in the foreground.

Framed in a white colored frame.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Black rocks protruding into the ocean on a cloudy morning.

Sold by Auction : Art for All the Children

Selah Hennesy Collection

A quiet place to paint in Fullerton is the Arboretum on the campus of California State University. This bent tree with its garlands of leaves growing in a field of poppies caught my attention. I liked the pairing of the old, twisted tree and the fresh grass. The weather was warm and sunny, a fine day to be painting outside along with other members of the Southern California Plein Air Painters Association. After some awkward sketches in which I tried to accommodate the twisted tree to the rectangle of the canvas, I decided to
focus on the base of the tree. I saw that the mass of trees receding behind it
provided a perfect counterpoint to the bending trunk in the foreground. In so doing the tree’s position in the composition seemed resolved. Framed in a thick black frame.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Glare from the noonday sun in winter made me squint to paint this scene just below the Muth Center at Upper Newport Bay.

This richly painted a la prima landscape shows
an unpaved path through the woods that surround Newport Beach’s Back Bay. The broad brushstrokes and bright colors reflect my exuberant response to a fresh natural scene, one largely unspoiled by fire or flood,
or a great deal of development.
I lived two blocks away and took frequent
walks here in the 1990s. When I returned a decade later I was sad to see that paths had been paved, trees cut down, the woods were becoming a park. Frame in a light colored wood.

One of the most iconic views of Laguna Beach
is this one from Heisler Park. Above a pristine beach a handsome tree-covered cliff juts westward into the Pacific, partially obscuring the town itself.

Selah Hennesy Collection

Bluffs on the west side of Back Bay in early morning light.

Collection: Jim and Andrea Dietze

Second version of the cottages in San Juan Capistrano

Several of my paintings of Coyote Hills (including the two seen here) use the same composition, abstracted from an actual view of a mountain pass. The “castle” is my name for the portion of the Coyote Hills where the hill appears to be cut through to create a rocky summit. The notch created here divides the scene in two: the right side overlapping the left side and revealing another hill behind the first. The challenge in painting this scene is how to balance the two sides using simplified shapes and strong warm colors. Many of the earlier attempts were more naturalistic. Heightening and intensifying the colors and simplifying the shapes helped me to organize and unify the painting.

Quiet Hill

Inspired by Southern California landscape painters like William Wendt, Maurice Braun,
and Edgar Payne, this painting shows the rich and varied terrain of Coyote Hills.

.

collection: Jenna Harris

In Sailboat a single figure stands on the dock before a sailboat in a very blue lake. It’s a painting that reflects the pleasurable activity I took in sailing in the New England of my youth.

The Back Bay from the Muth Center at low tide. The geometric lines of channels crossing the marsh make me think of Peru's Nazca lines where patterns on the desert floor were once thought to be landing strips for UFOs.

Jim and Andrea Dietze collection

My first painting of the iconic view of Laguna Beach from Heisler Park foregrounds the beach itself surrounded by colorful sandstone walls. The town is barely visible in the distance.

Framed in a thick black frame.

This is a companion to “Trail by the Back Bay”.
Another unpaved trail by Newport Beach’s Back Bay but with more visible sky
and fewer trees. The composition is traditional.
The diagonal trail is surrounded by receding planes of foliage on both sides, while a red line marks the composition’s center and at the same time points to a shift in the direction of the path. The slightly tilting dark blue shape above the trail represents a hillside with three trees and continues the emphasis on the center. This trail and the park it leads to is close to the bay. During the time I lived nearby, the park was turned into a housing development.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Seen from a height, the viewer looks down on a pair of palm trees and the rocky coast around which the ocean swirls.

My interest in this painting lay in showing a steep hillside rising abruptly from a flat field where depth is indicated by the diminishing widths of the bands of green foliage. The curving planes of the hillside provided an opportunity to paint a complex pattern of partially shaded forms. I was happy when I finished that I had caught some of the rugged beauty of this place.

Casper Wilderness Park, Ortega Highway.

Framed in a thick black frame.

This oil on paper painting is an early study of this view of Laguna Beach when the surf was very low. Buildings of the town are suggested by the pale brush marks that appear in the upper right corner. The beach is topped by a bright cliff which supports a grove of trees.

collection: Jim and Andrea Dietze

One of my many paintings recording the appearance of this iconic Southern California beach, with its rocky coast, its every changing shoreline, and its deep blue water. The grassy slope in the center supports a grove of trees and a pair of small buildings painted red. On a clear day the town of Laguna Beach would be visible beyond the outcropping of rocks in the upper right hand corner.

A return to the visual idea of the “castle”, where a large stone form reaches to the sky and a partly shaded mass lies opposite. Twisted areas of warm color in the foreground stand for trees and echo the swirling movement of the clouds above.

Upper Newport Bay with shadows staring to turn violet in the late afternoon light.

One of several paintings on this theme. This one shows more of the canyon's floor than most. The basic structure of these Coyote Hills paintings , is two crossing slopes of rocky outcroppings, the right one bathed in the afternoon sunlight, the left one in the shadow.

collection Julie

Pink and blue clouds float above the darkening mountains seen from a local park. Darker values of blue and green represent the hillside while a receding brown diagonal path crosses the foreground of the scene.

Sandy Cooper collection

Collection: Gia Harris and Tim Gettys

Inspired by Hopper New England coastal scenes, I reshaped the central rocks in a Hopper seascape to take the shape of Mickey. The interconnected dark values join together to become the familiar profile shape of the Mouse's head.

This small abstract painting is meant to evoke the European fascination with harems and concubines from the colonial period on. In the art of French modernists like Matisse the Odalisque provided a chance to paint a semi-nude female figure in an exotic and luxurious setting. In this painting I try to use abstract elements to accomplish the same thing; sensuous color; glowing light- like sunshine illuminating a dark interior; a pink vase to symbolize the Odalisque; and a pair of small red lines to suggest red slippers. Rich color and strong pattern evoke the romantic otherness ofthe Orient.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Painted at Nix Nature Center off Hwy 133 above Laguna Beach.

A distant view of Coyote Hills. The warm
tones of the limestone hills dominate the lower
two thirds of the painting. The whole scene is structured on a restful framework of zig-zagging diagonal lines. From the left horizon across to the “castle” on the right, to the shadowy ravine at the middle left , across the bottom third of the scene to a bush on the right side, and finally up the foreground slope to a large tree at the bottom left corner. All of this without sacrificing the naturalism of the place.

This Buddha was the first Buddha I painted.
Its location: Black Star Canyon. It was started in the late afternoon and stopped because of darkness. Finished the next day. The color and shape of the central mass feels about right, but in the supporting hills I pushed the contrast between the reddish rock and the green foliage. I still like the majesty of the central peak (the Buddha).
Framed in a thick black frame.

Collection: Gia Harris and Tim Gettys

Early in my searches of the landscape North of Fullerton I came upon this view. It is my favorite view of Coyote Hills, and what I later came to call the “ castle” because of the craggy peak in the upper right corner of the painting. Among my paintings there are at least a dozen versions of this motif. In this one and several others I liked the feeling of deep space and extreme verticality that comes from contrasting the foreground trees with the implied depth of the ravine below them. And in turn moving from that depth to the height of the peaks above.

From Tradewinds Lane just off Irvine Ave the view of Upper Newport Bay is striking. The dark ground cover contrast with the silky blond Pampas grass and the golden marshes below on a late afternoon at Upper Newport Bay.

Looking north from the park at Trump golf course

Collection: David and Marcia Tungate

Marsh grasses and sandstone bluffs seen on a slightly hazy morning at Newport Harbor's Back Bay. An interesting challenge to created a simple but evocative composition.

View of Palm trees looking north from Heisler Park at Laguna Beach.

atmospheric study of cliff faces from the beach looking north.

Framed in a beautiful silver frame.

from Red Rock Serenade

Catch the reflection before the wind comes up, you have to work quickly and remember what you saw. I got down the essentials of this scene in a hurry. Then worked to get the rest at a more leisurely pace.

donated to fundraiser for Arts for all the Children

This is one of my most carefully designed landscapes- and one of my most true to life
paintings as well. It was the outcome of extensive sketches and careful drawings of portions of the landscape. Its effectiveness is due to the controlled reduction in size of natural objects like trees as they recede towards the horizon.

View from Heisler Park, Laguna Beach. Photographs helped me to establish the intricate pattern of waves on the beach.

Julie Collection

Dr. Steven Richardson collection

collection Sung Kim

Summer in California. Dry orange grass shades to mauve; scrub foliage stays green: a marriage of seductive coloring and a sculptured landscape beneath a hazy sky.

Julie collection

These picturesquely eroded cliffs mark the Western edge of the still undeveloped wildlife corridor known as Coyote Hills. Sadly, in spite of efforts to preserve this wild area, it may be soon overtaken by a housing development.

Collection: Fullerton Collegge

Julie Tapley collection

George and Katherine (Betsy Gable family)

A trail meanders through dry yellow oragne meadows winding towards a screen of purple-violet trees. A late winter afternoon view of Clark Park.

Collection: Fullerton College

Collection: Gia Harris

Collection Julie

"Can I compare thee to a summer's day" - just about sums it up. collection Maria Bjorkman

Julie collection

collection Julie

collection: Lindsay and Cynthia Hoyt

On a late summer afternoon, I sketched this scene of an artist painting "en plein air".

Collection: Gia Harris and Tim Gettys

Collection: Gia Harris and Tim Gettys

collection: Selah Hennesy

Julie collection

Julie collection

Light on shrubs and houses on Tiffany Place Neighborhood created magic feeling.

collection: Jim and Andrea Dietze

This painting shows Coyote Hills Park, a small urban neighborhood park in Fullerton - not to be confused with the nearby much larger wilderness area of eroded cliffs know as Coyote Hills. The present view shows a few houses across the park seen through a screen of Eucalyptus trees.

A display of Fall color as the green leaves turn yellow and red. Another scene from Clark Park.

Capturing the effect of the changing color of the leaves as well as the contrasting colors of tree trunks provide the interest for me in this small celebration of Fall. Painted at Clark Regional Park, Fullerton.

Painted in morning light over a three day period from the last parking space at Clark park, the eroded mud of West Coyote Hills shows in the distance.

Collection: Tom Stark