A male figure near the base of a palm tree on stands half in sunlight, half in shadow. The diagonal of his rake continues the trajectory of the shadow on the palm tree, making the pair
into a central axis for the painting. Behind the two of them a sloping back yard is topped by
an apartment building. In retrospect the whole of this complex painting seems to have been
a tribute to caring for a home in Southern California.

The red paint of the closer apartment building are a near match to the color of the tiles in the further apartment. I found more interesting cloud formation in Coastal Orange County. Perhaps because of its proximity to the ocean.

Black slope behind our house with trees, shadows, and a figure, and the neighbor's house above the slope. My idea was to show the lively interaction of sunlight and shadow in a two level scene where the color of the house almost matches the sunlit portion of the garden. The figure partly shaded by the wall helps to balance the right side of the painting.

Low angled light. Bright contrasting colors.
A richly landscaped urban environment. The very essence of Southern California. A single automobile is parked by the sidewalk in front
of two homes at the north end of Tiffany Place
In Fullerton.

Second version of the informal garden behind
our house with neighboring house but no dividing wall. A straightforward rendering with
emphasis on the mottled sky. The clouds move
counter to the direction of the plants in the garden with the building as the axis of the composition.

Sunshine brightens the yellow paving and the
grass along with the figure raking it. The space is compressed to allow the shadowed parts of
table, tree, and wall to connect and unify the
painting.

The second attempt to create a painting that would combine four levels of spatial depth based on my backyard. The umbrella and lawn chair became recurring features in subsequent backyard paintings.

To combine interesting aspects of my street I imagined a second story view of the scene in late afternoon sunlight. In all respects other than the angle of vision the painting shows Tiffany Place as it appeared in the first decade of the 21st Century. Framed in a light colored wood.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Here I am looking through the kitchen window at the concrete RV platform and at the red roofed house across the street. The view is framed by partial views of two plants. Painted with considerable freedom.

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.

Part of the backyard Umbrella series. A large blue table with a small plant casts a shadow which overlaps a small table with a large plant. The red umbrella is raised to an eye-level which matches that of the smallest table.

A brick path from the patio leads to a concrete platform that a previous owner built for his RV. A white retaining wall separates a neighboring house from a grove of trees while the top of a palm tree shows above the patio to the upper left. The painting seeks to record the complexity to a point just short of chaos.

The aim here is to both simplify and enliven the narrative by creating a visual puzzle. Color is organized by value progression, light to dark and cool to warm. Traditional space is denied. For example, the shape of the umbrella overlays the triangle of lawn and squeezes out the space, the top of the chair flies into the horizontal line of the wall behind it. This abbreviates the narrative much as Cubism does.

This second painting uses the same setting, the time with a blue planter, an umbrella and its round table, along with the same orange planter. The higher viewpoint squeezes the space for the white fence and the buildings behind it. This provides a more open view of the yard.

This view of a backyard in Southern California typifies upper middle class life in Fullerton. A compressed space encapsulates key features: a green lawn surround by a fence,; a larger planter with a shadow of plant cast on it; then comes a blue-green bin. In the middle ground, a white fence catches shadows thrown from trees planted on the slope to the right; the neighbor's house with its many angled roof looks over the fence into the backyard. I have explored this view as a background for several paintings.

Again the backyard theme, this time with a woman on the patio. The woman is sunning herself in her lawn chair. The painting uses the background of a pink wall crossing the bright yellow-green lawn; the neighbor's house with its red tile roof and angled skylights. Here again objects at different depths are locked into a single plane by the sharing of values.

The challenge here was to unite the foreground and background with a radically sharp perspective. The retreating shadows and the powerful diagonal direction of the sidewalk, curb, and pavement were stabilized by the horizontal band of houses and trees at the upper one quarter of the painting.

Included is a table with umbrella and two chairs, and a couple of house plants. The pink area represents tiles that mark the patio portion of the yard. One of the aims of this painting was to show depth through the super-positioning of various objects right down to the ugly plant that rises diagonally across the painting. I originally intended to give the worker an important place in the composition but he didn't fit it in until I cropped him at the right edge of the canvas.

Repeats the same objects as Backyard with Worker: a shallow space, a patio, a lawn chair, umbrellas, low plastered wall. These objects, while located at different depths, are visually connected in the painting by sharing the same values; for example the foreground shadow on the pink patio continues onto the low plastered wall, and both shadows are touched by the dark shape of the lawn chair. This produces an intriguing visual puzzle.

Framed in a light colored wood.

Framed in a light colored wood.

In the backyard of my house with hammock and saw horse.

Framed in a light colored wood.

This is one of several views I painted of the southern portion of our backyard where the pink tiles meet the white concrete. Challenges here were 1) controlling the depth of the scene with perspective and 2) using light and shadow to create a balanced pattern.

The fourth painting views the backyard from a different angle and adds a central tree and a hanging flower pot. A low retaining wall to the left holds the slope above in its place. At right angles to the slope is a high wall that separates our yard from our neighbors yard. Fading light luminates the tree, the hanging planter, and the retaining wall.

Framed in a light colored wood.

North view of our house showing the contrast of the nearly blank wall and its surrounding green foliage. In the center of the painting are two areas of pink: the roof of the house across the street and the tiles of an incomplete backyard patio.

Framed in a light colored wood.

A very messy tree, casting a shadow over part of a wood pile. Tree eventually cut down. Joined with shaded ladders and wall of house it made a sever composition.

Framed in a light colored wood.