Paradise City 48x48

4ftx4ft Resin/ Acrylic/ Canvas. Ready to hang. I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone call THE Pacific Coast Highway “Pac Highway.” As if it were normal to drive on one of the most famous roads in America, with the Pacific Ocean on one side. It was 2017, and the restaurant I was managing had brilliant, ocean-themed artwork. It will take years of living in San Diego to understand that all of that art was a curated collection of everyday occurrences throughout this coastal city. At the time, though, it was abstract and beautiful beyond what I had the capacity to imagine, let alone experience as everyday moments. To me in 2017, this city was the final destination. It was Paradise City. The end of the tunnel, the final representation that I was capable, I had healed my life, and I found happily ever after. I was determined to trade most of my life to work for a large company that granted me the privilege of relocating here. Back then, I thought that if I learned to work in a suit, I’d be respected like I knew how to wear one. For a year, I focused only on getting here. After that, we went to the ocean every single day. The thing about the Pacific Ocean is that it’s cold ten months out of the year, there are a great deal of sting rays when it’s warm, and she will relentlessly beat your ass as many times as you let her without apology. We did that for a long time. I learned about carne asada fries and breakfast burritos, matcha lattes with every given flavor, and elote. I’ve been called a white girl or caucasian more times than not, and the fact that I cannot speak Spanish is embarrassing, like not knowing how to read amongst groups of people that are reading out loud. I’m often being told I don’t understand things because I’m a white girl, or just having Spanish spoken over me as if I’m not there. I’ve learned to roll with this. We learned the best yoga studios, the best places to snorkel and skate. Like a true Southern Californian, for the most part, I sit in my car in a coffee shop parking lot on the phone just to decompress, given I have downtime and I’m not working one of the four jobs I have in order for the rent to be paid. “On a packed bookshelf, San Diego is a beautifully photographed, glossy travel magazine. If you're here, it’s an effortless performance.” I’ve always said. But what happens when I finally know I don’t need to perform to live happily and peacefully? What happens when I’m finally enough, regardless of what my life looks like on the outside? For as beautiful as this city is, it’s cutthroat too. Everyone needs a lot of money. Doing anything with my art costs thousands of dollars up front to participate. Most people are managing addictions of some sort, and while I’m used to navigating that, it’s hard to be around constantly. Roughly 40,000 people per square mile and no safe or reliable public transportation. A homeless person is always going to be just there, about to jump out at you (with a baseball bat!) If that sounds insensitive, congratulations, you don’t have it in front of you every single day. Lately when we fly out, all I see are the hordes of million-dollar houses in Bankers Hill stacked on top of each other from the tarmac. Because there’s the California dream and the California reality. I’ve lived in each extreme of both. The only normal people I know who own homes here either bought them before the millennium or their parents provided a down payment and beyond. This year we started seriously considering the numbers to buy a house here. A 30 year 4k a month mortgage in a tiny, old place was maybe justifiable. But the additional thousand dollars of property tax per month, for us, is a flat-out, absolutely not. I have the privilege of making a lot of money in San Diego, and our landlord has been kind enough not to double our rent. Both of those things can change at any moment. I’ve had a vast life experience so far. It’s provided me with the gifts of class, finesse, and of never being afraid to leave. Girl, I am always going to go. I make art because I’m addicted to starting over. Not to run and erase, to evolve. Yes, I’m going to leave the little house I built an art career and wrote my very first book in. Yes, I’m going to empty out the studio I sold 400 paintings from and walk away with it empty. Yes, I’m going to leave a job where everyone has been there 20+ years and I literally got it because somebody died, that's the level of turnover. Like yes. I’ll go. I’ve lived enough to know that the thing that feels the scariest is probably the best thing to do. Especially if it means getting uncomfortable. I wanted to paint one last painting in my little studio, in our beat-up old bungalow by the ocean. This week I’ll start dismantling everything into boxes, so my intention was to take one last piece of time here that I put to canvas in order to bring into the next chapter of our lives. I have no idea what my next art space will look like. The whole time I made this canvas I was in such a process of anxiety. Anxiety it wouldn’t work, or turn out, or portray the level of hustle & battle required to actually make it financially and mentally at the same time in San Diego. In Paradise City. This is one of my first pieces in a while where the shadow is at the forefront and dictates the movement of the light. Time has a way of making the shifts between light and shadow subtle, until they aren’t. A train runs through Little Italy in downtown San Diego. There’s a dreaded 45-car freight train that moves at the pace of honey that passes around 9 pm or 1 am. The last time I got stuck from it passing I called my friend, yelling in mock horror. “The freight train!! Girl!! Traffic backed up to Pac Fucking Highway!!!” In the moment I remembered 8 years ago, hearing “pac highway” for the first time and just thinking it was the coolest thing to know. Sometimes it was bliss expanding beyond this place. A lot of the time it was a war. Each light and shadow had its value, because to me, that’s what keeps evolution simple.