The Orange Grove Apts

24"x16" oil on canvas ••• This painting is one in a series of six, three of which I have shown you before. In case you forgot, I have included the entire series below. • I told the story of how this series came about a few times this last weekend at the Beverly Hills Art Show. When I say a few times, I mean in the neighborhood of 3,000 times. Being the gas bag that I am, here is it once more. • My nuclear family currently resides in the city from whence I came. Yep, I was born here. One day I got this urge to go looking for a particular building I vaguely remembered from my childhood (my entire childhood is a vague memory, but let's skip that story). It was a typical mid-century California soft-story apartment building with the name "Capri" in script on its front. (Soft-story means that the front of the building might collapse during an earthquake—basically, you go to bed at night, an earthquake hits and you wake up on the hood of your Honda.) • Don't ask me why I wanted to see it (see "vague memory" reference above), I just did. As with most anything in this city that is really neat looking, has historical value and is really worth saving, it had been torn down. This bummed me out and brought on a slight obsession with this oh-so Southern California building. They truly are So-Cal icons. The more I researched them, the more I felt I had to paint them. • There it is. Not much of a story, but it's what I've got. ••• Oh, I almost forgot. If The Spousal Unit ever tries to tell you some wild story about me driving the car up onto the sidewalk (a few times—and maybe a few lawns too) trying to research these buildings and how she had to take command of the car so I would not kill us, don't believe her. I will deny everything.

My Report on The Beverly Hills Art Show
I have a base set of criteria that needs to be met before I consider a show good. As many of you may know, number one on my list is me not getting tasered by the wonderful BH Park Rangers. That criteria, thankfully, was met. I will not bore you with the rest of the list which goes all the way down to the accessibility of cookies. • The following sentence is a repeat of what I reported last time, but it is true again: The show last weekend was probably the best Beverly Hills Art Show I have had. The weather was great, the friends wonderful and the sales brisk. • The ever-lovely She Who Ultimately Gets All the Money Anyway was there, which is high up on my list of criteria for a truly great show.

Posted May 21, 2015

sold • private collection beverly hills, ca