Post Card from the Edge; Chuck's San Diego

My commission mission:  To capture the essence of Chuck’s twenty years in San Diego on a 24”x 36” canvas.  Twenty years can accumulate a lot of memories, especially in this beautiful destination city.  The list of things to do in San Diego is endless and to catalogue everything Chuck experienced would take a wall mural.  So I took a different approach.

The Post Card?  I didn’t want to squeeze a thousand images onto a canvas.  It would be too difficult to pull off, we have scrapbooks for this, and they can be their own creative medium.  Chuck also wanted one piece instead of multiple panels of different scenes.  So I decided on a nostalgic approach.  I went with a layout that had the feel of the gift shop post card.  The kind of post card a golfer like Chuck might select in a pro shop, perhaps.  The whole premise around any post card is to capture or commemorate memories of a place visited.  Knowing Chuck’s sense of humor I thought a more cliché approach would be a perfect.

The Edge?  Torrey Pines is one of America’s finest public golf courses and it just happens to sit high on cliffs above the Pacific.  Chuck has spent a lot of time here and it’s one of the places he’s going to miss the most.  From here I went with the nightlife energy of the Gaslamp District, plus a view of the iconic San Diego Bay with a few sailboats.

   

I tried to use color to capture the dry but tropical warmth of this glorious city.  A little Spanish influenced architecture from the Balboa Theater can be seen on the custom painted frame.  Yes, the frame is part of the work in many of my paintings. 

This baby is done.  Thanks for the opportunity, Chuck.  I hope you enjoy.  Welcome back to Oregon – the sun is out and it’s Masters week!