Paint Dance: "Hills of Santa Barbara", 10x8, oil on wrapped canvas

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"Hills of Santa Barbara", 10x8, oil on wrapped canvas

Going back a few years, we took a trip out to California to help our middle son try to figure out which law school to attend. I was not all that keen on the trip, frankly, wanting him to stay on the east coast and closer to "home".

Nonetheless, when I saw the beauty of California for the first time, I truly understood why he had applied to so many schools on the west coast. During that trip we drove from San Diego, all the way up the coast to San Francisco. It was a fun trip, and along the way, we fell in love with a couple spots along the coast. Santa Barbara was one of them. We had lunch at one of the restaurants on the harbor, and with a view that was close to paradise, I can still recall that the restaurant served the best ahi tuna that I'd ever had.

After lunch we ventured up into the foothills of Santa Barbara, and came across the site of a hidden monastery where we found these words engraved into the stone wall:

"I am a man. No men are foreigners to me. Of one blood are all nations."

My son engraved his own little memento into a tree there, and that tree will contain his words until the tree no longer stands. After he carved his words, we both stood mesmerized, our gaze parallel to the treetops, captivated by the smell of jasmine wafting down from the mountainside.

Refreshed from our lunch and the sweet air, we ventured further up into the mountains and that is where I spied this gorgeous vista:

Although I know that there are a lot of celebrities that live in Santa Barbara, whoever owns this particular casa is under the protective shadow of the mountains and yet high above the sea. And that is the scene that I painted today, alla prima, impressionist style.

I painted this with palette knife only and it has layers of thick, juicy paint.