It seems as if I had to move to New York City to paint California. I am in a long line of artists that were fascinated with the West while calling the Big Apple home. Albert Bierstadt traveled with the West extensively. Bierstadt is most known for his large-scale landscapes of California famously painting Northern California, the Sierras, and capturing the imagination of Americans with his realistic paintings of wild places.
One of these wild places included the Farallones Islands (Devil’s Teeth) off the coast of San Francisco. These island play a special role in my life and I recently was sent a photo from a friend of a shot from the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. You often cannot see the islands from the coast, but on a clear day, they stick out of the Pacific. The Farallones are home to one of the greatest colonies of Great White Sharks, blue whales, sea lions, and a diverse amount of pelagic birds. It is a magical place. Here is my attempt to capture some of it’s magic in water color.
