Darby loved fetching sticks in a lake. He didn't get a lot of chances to do it around home, but he made up for it on our trips to the mountains. This painting was based on one of Maureen's photos from 2017 at McCloud Lake in the Mammoth area. I especially liked the reflections and ripples and liked the challenge of trying to make water look somewhat real.
I looked through our photos from our travels in 2000 for something to paint and I came across one from the village of Cushendun in Northern Ireland. We were driving around the Antrim coast with relatives Margaret and Bernard and Andrew and Stephanie enjoying the beautiful green hills and rugged coastline.
It was January 20, 2018, the one-year anniversary of the Women's March at the first Trump inauguration. We went to downtown Oakland and joined the march with many thousands of others. I thought it would be timely to paint something like this since there is lots of reason to protest these days. The mood feels different though. In 2018 people were feeling a lot more positive about being able to make changes. Today, I think that many of us have just about given up hope. I used a couple of Maureen's photos and one of mine to put together this scene of the crowd near Broadway and Telegraph, with the City Hall on the left and the Flatiron Building on the right.
