California Highway One: Finding Home, 2023

This series of paintings showcasing vistas and viewpoints along California Route One’s coastline commemorates my first years living in Northern California. I found solace in visiting the coastline and gathering inspiration for paintings in the midst of the global pandemic and a career shift. In the early months of settling into my new home and debating leaving my corporate job to pursue my art career, I found age-old sanctuaries where I could reconnect with myself and nature amidst the rugged California coastline. By hiking up above on cliffs, down sloping cliff sides, and on the beaches down below, I exercised my body and mind to view my environment and my thoughts from different perspectives. I often found myself staring out into the sea, its rhythmic motion providing space for my thoughts. Through grounding myself in my new environment, I reconnected with my values and the type of life I wanted to live: a life more emotionally engaged with people, nature, and finding the significance in their connection.

As I observe my surroundings for my paintings, studying the details of nature, I feel both senses of timelessness and fleetingness. I learn the names of the wildflowers I always see on the cliffs, like the Seaside Woolly Sunflower, California Buckwheat, and Bermuda Buttercup. I follow the flight patterns of the birds, like the lines of brown pelicans in flight, and learn how birds’ flight patterns are changing with our climate. I watch the cliffsides erode and crumble under the constant pressure of the wind and sea. My paintings reflect this challenge of appreciating the intricacies and interconnectedness of our environment, and provokes viewers to reflect on humanity’s roles in nature by transporting them into expansive landscapes.