May 2026

Near the end of our 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail, Gerald and I had just climbed Mt. Whitney and were coming down the east side very tired and looking for a place to stop. We saw a nice little lake off the side of the trail (Mirror Lake) so we went down and set up camp. A little later we wandered over to the lake outlet and found a sign saying "No Camping". It was late in the day and we guessed that it was unlikely that anyone would see us there, so we stayed. The next morning we finished the hike to Whitney Portal and were picked up by Maureen.

April 2026

I needed an idea for a painting for my next open studio class. I was hiking along while Maureen and Judy rode Zim and Mumu, and saw a bunch of poppies on the side of the trail and took a couple of photos. Previous paintings of poppies were a bit unsatisfying, and I wanted them to really pop out from the background, so I used a lot of darker green. It's kind of messy, but at least the colors stand out pretty well.

Among some old photos I found one that wanted to be painted. It's from one of our trips to Canada when we spent some time on Salt Spring Island. The scene is in Ruckle Provincial Park on a trail along the northeast shore. We've been to the island several times and we always love it there. One of the women in my painting class said that she grew up in Vancouver and knew the island. She said she loved the arbutus trees on the shore. We did too, and we noticed that the arbutus is the same tree that we call madrone in California.

We took Zim up to Placerville for the annual retreat. As usual, I took quite a few photos, but found most of them uninspiring since they look much like the thousands of clinic photos I've taken in the past. But up in Chris and Claire's place, I noticed a large photo on the wall, a tight shot of a horse and saddle. I thought about painting something like that, and I used a shot of Chris on his number one horse, Picasso. I think it worked out pretty well as a painting. It focuses on the saddle area where most of the action takes place while riding. If I had included the whole horse and rider that area would have been much less noticeable.

March 2026

I had been thinking of doing another painting of Zim, and one day he was standing outside of the barn and he turned his head just right to catch the sunlight on his face and I snapped a photo. It's kind of an odd pose, but I like it. I worked on the painting over a couple of open studio days at the senior center and I think I caught his look pretty well.

One of my favorite photos from the John Muir Trail was one of Garnet Lake with Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak in the background. I had painted the scene a few years ago, but was not satisfied with it. This time I painted it quite quickly in one session of my open studio class and I like it much better than my first try. One thing that I aim for is getting washes dark enough the first time rather than doing many layers. It makes a fresher looking painting. On this one I didn't do it 100%, but did pretty well.

February 2026

Near the end of our 1995 trip to the UK and Ireland we ended up in Bath. It was a rough day, after being stuck in a very hot train for hours, walking for miles trying to find a place to stay for the night, and finally settling for an old hotel next to the train station that was quite noisy. Then the next day we found a better place to stay and began enjoying this beautiful little city. In this view, the river Avon flows through the center of town.

 

We have lived on Kelly Street for nearly 40 years now. Down at the bottom of the hill, Kelly ends at the intersection with B Street and Center Street. Whenever we come home we always pass this funky little collection of shops on the corner. I've always thought that it made an interesting scene and one day, while waiting at the stop light, I took a photo with my phone, and used it to make this painting. Val's restaurant, which is just out of the frame on the left, is famous all over the area, and some day may inspire another  painting, but this time I focused on the bar on the corner, Curly's Place.

January 2026

Maureen suggested that I do a painting based on photos from our 1997 trip to the east coast. I looked through them and didn't find any that were very inspiring, but I did find one of the beach at Ocean City, Maryland, that had some potential. I remember being amazed at the whole scene when we were there. Huge crowds of people everywhere and the long boardwalk filled with with tacky little souvenir shops. It was like the beach at Santa Cruz taken to the extreme. Maureen's childhood friend, who we were with, said it was like a little United Nations with all the diversity, but as you can see it was nearly all white.

 I picked another scene from my 2001 hike of the John Muir Trail with my friend, Gerald. This is our campsite at lower Palisade Lake after a hard day of climbing the Golden Staircase with heavily loaded packs after being resupplied by Aaron and Alicia the previous day.

I happened across a photo from our trip to Mammoth last September that I thought I could use for a painting. I remember having that in mind at the time that I took it. As we often do, we went for a walk at Hot Creek and found this high desert scene on the canyon slopes.

December 2025

I took a photo of a muddy ranch road in February, 2005. It was after a recent rain in Dry Creek Pioneer Regional Park which adjoins Garin Park. What attracted me to the scene was the effects of light and shadow on the hills. I think I captured it pretty well.

 On a recent hike on the Ukraina Trail of Garin Park, I passed this old barn. In the past it had been fenced off so I couldn't get around the back side without climbing the fence. This time the fence was gone so I walked around to get a better view and took a photo. I liked all the shadows and angles so I painted it. It wasn't the first time — I painted it several years ago viewed from the other side.

I chose to do something a bit challenging and try to paint from a photo I took in September, 2004. This was a close up shot of Rock Creek in the eastern sierra near the East Fork Campground where we camped several times. I've always been fascinated by what I see in moving water and I often try to capture it in photos. My challenge here was to try to make it look like real water, and I think I did that pretty well.

 In my younger days I was a big fan of the photography of Ansel Adams and anything about the Sierra. I had come across one of his photos that really impressed me. It was a view of Mount Clarence King in Kings Canyon N.P. The photo somehow emphasized the great height of the peak above the deep canyon. In thinking about what to paint next, I remembered that I had noticed the peak on my hike of the John Muir Trail, so I looked up my photo and used it for this painting. At the time of the hike it was just another typical mountain view, but now I saw that it meant something more to me. By the way, Clarence King was a member of the expedition led by William Brewer which in the 1860s spent four years exploring California, and King wrote a book about his experiences entitled "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada". It's an exciting and rather sensational account of his adventures. Brewer's book, "Up and Down California" is one of my favorites and it is an honest and complete account of the expedition.

November 2025

On October 18, 2025, millions of people all over the country and around the world gathered to protest the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump. We joined a crowd of a thousand or so at the Hayward City Hall. It was totally peaceful but it was good to see that so many feel like we do. I took a bunch of photos with my phone and thought about combining some of them to show more of the crowd, but I finally chose this view with the city hall in the background which seemed to sum up the occasion. It took longer than my usual paintings and I worked on it over three sessions of my open studio class.

One afternoon I went for hiking after my painting class. I didn't want to drive far, so I went to the Zeile Creek Entrance to Garin Regional Park. I did a loop from the creek past the barn where we once boarded our horses. It's been closed for years and I could see that a large section of the roof of the main barn has caved in. It's too bad because we liked riding on the trails of Garin from there. Near the creek I noticed some leaves from a big leaf maple, and I took a photo. Sometimes I find beauty in a simple close-up view of the natural world.

On another afternoon after my painting class I went to Sunol for a short hike. I started off up the Canyon View Trail heading towards Little Yosemite, but I had forgotten that the trail is quite steep at first. When I reached a cross trail that would take me back down, I sat on a rock and thought what to do. As I was sitting, I noticed this oak tree on the hillside that seemed to glow, and I took a photo. I decided that I was tired enough and took the cross trail back down.

We rented a little house near downtown Hayward from 1975 to 1986 at 1299 Russell Way, and just down the block was an interesting old house that backed up to the creek. We used to walk by it whenever we walked that way, and one day I took a photo of it. Sometime in the 80s it was torn down to build the senior living facility Casa Sandoval, so now it is just a memory.