A Green Guy in a Tan Place
I grew up in a magical place far-far away. Everything was green or blue, or sometimes yellow and orange, and if we were really lucky, pure white.
I love color. Vibrant color. Saturated color. My paintings are full of every color, but one color I never loved was tan. I never thought of tan as a thing because it has no personality. It’s sort of like dishwater. Red, now red has a personality. Red demands you pay attention. It alerts you to danger. Love, romance, passion, all red. Blue is calm. Blue is cool. Blue is endless like the sky, - and it is my favorite color. Green is summer and baseball and family trips.
Tan on the other hand is sort of the skim milk of colors. It says nothing, asks nothing of you, and really, I just never thought much about it. I mean, no one has ever thought, “Tan is the color of my true love's lips”. It doesn’t show up in a lot of poems, yet here I am, living in the tannest place this side of the Martian surface.
So how does this happen, a green-loving guy living in a tan place? As I’m sure you can guess, when life plans got all wonky, there is a woman involved.
I went college at Arizona State. At the time it seemed like a good choice. It was cheap, had a good art department and it was far enough from my parents that they couldn’t visit.
I never saw the place before I landed there, but the 3 inch thick catalog they sent me made it look quite impressive. The dorms had pools. The auditorium was designed by Frank Llyod Wright. It had been designed to be built in Saudi Arabia but somehow landed up in Tempe. When it comes to architecture, I guess a tan place is a tan place.
The day I landed in Phoenix, it was 118. 118, that was not mentioned in the 3 inch thick catalog. I immediately questioned my desert choice.
Over time I acclimated to ASU. It was a fun party school with saguaros and the parties won me over, but I couldn’t wait to leave - and about 3 hours after graduation I loaded up my Dodge Colt and headed to the coast. I hoped to never see the desert again… and I didn’t for over 40 years. Until... I met a desert-lovin’ woman.
My partner Anna grew up in SoCal. She spent each spring break in Palms Springs, and she has great memories of visiting her snowbird grandfather in Bombay Beach before it turned int a toxic hipster hell-scape. Her idea of plein air painting … desert mountains and smoke trees.
My memories, on the other hand, were filled with lakefront property in the Adirondacks. Tall green trees and cool blue lakes. That is what fills my head, and bears. At night we’d go to the dump to watch the bears eat trash. There was no TV so that is what you did. You watched bears.
During Anna’s and my first decade together this green/tan divide popped up from time to time. I took her to see our the family cabin on the banks of the most beautiful lake imaginable… well, I was so thrilled to be there… to share some of my happiest memories. “I so love it here,” I told her. Her reply, “Green is depressing. It's just too green here. You can’t see the sky through the green.”
That's how it was for almost a decade. If I mentioned retiring to the mountains, her answer was always, “You know what happens where there are trees? Fires happen where there are trees! How about the Mojave?” Then it was my turn and I would give her my doomsday scenario about global warming. “Soon it’s going to be too hot to live in the Mojave.”
We were at a green/tan impasse.
It seems my doomsday scenario didn’t make a dent in her determination, because one day I got this text,
“I found this property by Joshua Tree. It is a total disaster, like a dump, but there is a great old house, sand dunes and an actual oasis. An Oasis!”
I hate tan. I just kept thinking, I hate it, but I needed to be a good partner and give it a chance. The next day I jump in the Prius and drove out to 29. What I found was a big, tan piece of land covered in 40,000 pounds of trash including 12 refrigerators, hundreds of tires, tons of building materials, dismembered bikes, cars, 2 squatters, and the property owner. She loved the place and didn’t seem to even notice the trash. She did give me a warning: “Never let anyone stay on your property” and she said it while pointing at the two beat up trailers that were jacking electricity from the power pole at the far end of the property.
I saw nothing but tan. Tan sand dunes. A tan yard, trash cover in tan sand, but Anna was right about oasis. It was beautiful and greenish, and it came with a family of bobcats.
I could see the charm and potential and if Anna wanted to live in a tan world I’d be supportive. She had a strong list of positives--the decidedly non-Coastal price, a barn that can be made into a studio, a great art community--and she wasn’t wrong about any of it. She could imagine the place all cleaned up and wanted to restore the land. That was her dream.
It seemed overwhelming to me… It gave me actual panic attacks.
My plan was to stay in LA and visit from time to time. My life was in LA. I am more comfortable hearing gun shots than dirt bikes.
The day we signed the escrow papers I posted about it on facebook. My college friend Lisa was the first to reply. “Anna knows you hate the desert, right?”
I typed back “I’ll mostly stay in the city”
Then Covid hit and the city closed. No more art openings. No restaurants or hanging in coffee shops. No seeing friends. Everything that made the city livable was gone. A house in the middle of about 300 acres of nothing seemed a lot safer than one with a homeless trailer parked 30 feet from the front door in El Sereno.
Slowly I migrated. First some clothing, then an easel, the cats came next, and eventually I was living in a tan world, and honestly, I was not thrilled. Because as you might recall, I am not a fan of the tan.
Every time I went back and forth to get things I’d be okay until I got about a mile from the house. I’d pass that old Fosters Freeze on 2 Mile and have this sudden, unshakable depression. “How the hell did this happen? How am I living here?”
But with covid there really was no option and I was lucky that Anna found this place when she did.
It took some time before I could paint out here. I love my LA studio. It’s in an old military barracks. It’s round. I just couldn’t find any inspiration out here. Everything was so… you know.
But... eventually the expansiveness got to me. The vistas overcame the tan-ness and I started to create. I’m still painting colorful work but I’ve given in and made the ground tan. Did you know that there are actually several different colors of tan paint you can buy? And tan with a little blue or green mixed in, well you can pretend it an actual color.
So now I’m a green guy showing tan paintings in galleries. I have no idea what color guy I will be once this covid thing is over but I’m thinking that I might be purple. Now, when I look at the mountains I finally understand that line in America The Beautiful about the purple mountains majesty. I’m starting to see that purple.
I love color. Vibrant color. Saturated color. My paintings are full of every color, but one color I never loved was tan. I never thought of tan as a thing because it has no personality. It’s sort of like dishwater. Red, now red has a personality. Red demands you pay attention. It alerts you to danger. Love, romance, passion, all red. Blue is calm. Blue is cool. Blue is endless like the sky, - and it is my favorite color. Green is summer and baseball and family trips.
Tan on the other hand is sort of the skim milk of colors. It says nothing, asks nothing of you, and really, I just never thought much about it. I mean, no one has ever thought, “Tan is the color of my true love's lips”. It doesn’t show up in a lot of poems, yet here I am, living in the tannest place this side of the Martian surface.
So how does this happen, a green-loving guy living in a tan place? As I’m sure you can guess, when life plans got all wonky, there is a woman involved.
I went college at Arizona State. At the time it seemed like a good choice. It was cheap, had a good art department and it was far enough from my parents that they couldn’t visit.
I never saw the place before I landed there, but the 3 inch thick catalog they sent me made it look quite impressive. The dorms had pools. The auditorium was designed by Frank Llyod Wright. It had been designed to be built in Saudi Arabia but somehow landed up in Tempe. When it comes to architecture, I guess a tan place is a tan place.
The day I landed in Phoenix, it was 118. 118, that was not mentioned in the 3 inch thick catalog. I immediately questioned my desert choice.
Over time I acclimated to ASU. It was a fun party school with saguaros and the parties won me over, but I couldn’t wait to leave - and about 3 hours after graduation I loaded up my Dodge Colt and headed to the coast. I hoped to never see the desert again… and I didn’t for over 40 years. Until... I met a desert-lovin’ woman.
My partner Anna grew up in SoCal. She spent each spring break in Palms Springs, and she has great memories of visiting her snowbird grandfather in Bombay Beach before it turned int a toxic hipster hell-scape. Her idea of plein air painting … desert mountains and smoke trees.
My memories, on the other hand, were filled with lakefront property in the Adirondacks. Tall green trees and cool blue lakes. That is what fills my head, and bears. At night we’d go to the dump to watch the bears eat trash. There was no TV so that is what you did. You watched bears.
During Anna’s and my first decade together this green/tan divide popped up from time to time. I took her to see our the family cabin on the banks of the most beautiful lake imaginable… well, I was so thrilled to be there… to share some of my happiest memories. “I so love it here,” I told her. Her reply, “Green is depressing. It's just too green here. You can’t see the sky through the green.”
That's how it was for almost a decade. If I mentioned retiring to the mountains, her answer was always, “You know what happens where there are trees? Fires happen where there are trees! How about the Mojave?” Then it was my turn and I would give her my doomsday scenario about global warming. “Soon it’s going to be too hot to live in the Mojave.”
We were at a green/tan impasse.
It seems my doomsday scenario didn’t make a dent in her determination, because one day I got this text,
“I found this property by Joshua Tree. It is a total disaster, like a dump, but there is a great old house, sand dunes and an actual oasis. An Oasis!”
I hate tan. I just kept thinking, I hate it, but I needed to be a good partner and give it a chance. The next day I jump in the Prius and drove out to 29. What I found was a big, tan piece of land covered in 40,000 pounds of trash including 12 refrigerators, hundreds of tires, tons of building materials, dismembered bikes, cars, 2 squatters, and the property owner. She loved the place and didn’t seem to even notice the trash. She did give me a warning: “Never let anyone stay on your property” and she said it while pointing at the two beat up trailers that were jacking electricity from the power pole at the far end of the property.
I saw nothing but tan. Tan sand dunes. A tan yard, trash cover in tan sand, but Anna was right about oasis. It was beautiful and greenish, and it came with a family of bobcats.
I could see the charm and potential and if Anna wanted to live in a tan world I’d be supportive. She had a strong list of positives--the decidedly non-Coastal price, a barn that can be made into a studio, a great art community--and she wasn’t wrong about any of it. She could imagine the place all cleaned up and wanted to restore the land. That was her dream.
It seemed overwhelming to me… It gave me actual panic attacks.
My plan was to stay in LA and visit from time to time. My life was in LA. I am more comfortable hearing gun shots than dirt bikes.
The day we signed the escrow papers I posted about it on facebook. My college friend Lisa was the first to reply. “Anna knows you hate the desert, right?”
I typed back “I’ll mostly stay in the city”
Then Covid hit and the city closed. No more art openings. No restaurants or hanging in coffee shops. No seeing friends. Everything that made the city livable was gone. A house in the middle of about 300 acres of nothing seemed a lot safer than one with a homeless trailer parked 30 feet from the front door in El Sereno.
Slowly I migrated. First some clothing, then an easel, the cats came next, and eventually I was living in a tan world, and honestly, I was not thrilled. Because as you might recall, I am not a fan of the tan.
Every time I went back and forth to get things I’d be okay until I got about a mile from the house. I’d pass that old Fosters Freeze on 2 Mile and have this sudden, unshakable depression. “How the hell did this happen? How am I living here?”
But with covid there really was no option and I was lucky that Anna found this place when she did.
It took some time before I could paint out here. I love my LA studio. It’s in an old military barracks. It’s round. I just couldn’t find any inspiration out here. Everything was so… you know.
But... eventually the expansiveness got to me. The vistas overcame the tan-ness and I started to create. I’m still painting colorful work but I’ve given in and made the ground tan. Did you know that there are actually several different colors of tan paint you can buy? And tan with a little blue or green mixed in, well you can pretend it an actual color.
So now I’m a green guy showing tan paintings in galleries. I have no idea what color guy I will be once this covid thing is over but I’m thinking that I might be purple. Now, when I look at the mountains I finally understand that line in America The Beautiful about the purple mountains majesty. I’m starting to see that purple.