Introduction to Big Sur Land Trust

About Me (written in September 2006, to convince the BSLT to consider ME for a trial guest artist residency on the Glen Deven property in Palo Colorado Canyon.


With the exception of one special year living in Rome, I have always resided in Los Angeles. As cities go, L.A. is complex, diverse, colorful, edgy and sometimes dysfunctional. It attracts people from every corner of the earth to put down roots in a shaky foundation and houses expand like fungus across hills and valleys, straight into the desert floor. To live here is to negotiate with noise, navigate traffic, ignore the politics of celebrity and try to find zen in the stop and go of it all. All of this shows up in my paintings. With so much of life lived at 65 miles per hour, painting is a conscious effort to still time, to stop the moment and smell the roses. Sometimes the roses stink. Sometimes they meet your senses like an aphrodisiac.

This love/ hate relationship with Los Angeles has remained manageable for one reason. In my imagination, I’ve lived in Big Sur since first visiting there at the age of fourteen. I used to sketch a dream house with a living room that contained all the trappings for art making: easel and paint, loom, musical instruments. My imaginary house of wood and glass was situated In the light diffusing shade of redwoods, ironically in Palo Colorado.

In reality, I built a similar house in Beverly Glen Canyon in Los Angeles. I married a musician and raised three children, all of whom I am very proud. I developed as an artist while concurrently teaching art to children (and later adults). Within the last year, I’ve shown my paintings in three venues, two group shows and one solo, all of them in Northern California.

That I’m presently appealing to be the first Big Sur Artist Resident both amazes me and doesn’t surprise me. Artists put (sometimes undue) trust in imagination, instinct and the ability to listen to one’s own voice. But occasionally there will be signs, real life coincidences that confirm your course.

Last year, on an art excursion throughout Italy, I befriended Erin Gafill and Tom Birmingham. For a thousand reasons, which you already probably know, Erin and Tom have both become important and cherished friends to me. Their commitment to community, creativity, family and especially, the Big Sur Arts Initiative mirrors my own experiences founding art programs for children in Los Angeles. Our personal understanding of struggles particular to “working” artists has only deepened our friendship. It was a casual conversation with Erin in July that sparked the possibility of making a Big Sur Artist residency a reality.

I’ve been recently reflecting on the long list of artists who found their way to Big Sur, then took the images and spirit they found there back out to the world. It is a lifelong dream of mine to add my name to that list.