So, here’s my first post in a while, and it’s regarding some bummer news. Any of you watching the news around the beginning of this month probably heard that Santa Barbara suffered from some terrible wildfires, specifically the Jesusita Fire. Well, we live within about a mile and a half from the origin of the fire, and were evacuated for six days. During the panic of preparing to evacuate, as we were packing up our most valued possessions, a well-meaning relative took all of my paintings off the walls and threw them in his car trunk.

You don’t want to leave art in a car trunk for a week, because bad things can happen to them. Such as the eyescrews from the back of one piece gouging into the front of another piece:

These are details from a poster I had illustrated for Ensemble Theatre Company, for a play about the final years of Zelda Fitzgerald, entitled The Last Flapper. Below is the image before it was damaged.

I painted that image five years ago, and while it has its faults that I see every time I look at it, I still have nostalgia for this particular image, as it was for a great client during a fun season of life. I’ve been assured by my good friends at the Fine Art Conservation Lab that they’re going to be able to restore it with no problem, and I hope they’re right.

I’m happy to report that my house is still standing, but it was a close call. The hillside just two and half blocks up from our house is completely scorched, but the firefighters made a stand there and save our neighborhood.