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Blogs by Richard French
A Visit to Del Mar, California 4/26/2016 2:00:54 PM
What a treat it can be to go to a place where we've never been before!
In my retirement years, I've been able to visit Vancouver Island, Hudson, Florida, Cleveland, Ohio, Halifax in Nova Scotia, and Israel and Jordan -- all new to me. A while ago, I flew from Toronto to San Diego to spend a few days with an old high school friend and her son in Del Mar, a well-to-do city of about 4100 people, north of San Diego. My friend, who comes from eastern Massachusetts, usually spends part of each winter in this area.
We stayed at a boutique hotel called The Secret Garden, where we had a view of the Pacific Ocean from the west-facing windows of our very comfortable suite.
I explored the city with my two friends and on my own when they were busy with their work.
The San Diego area is known to have some of the best weather in the world, with moderate temperatures and rainfall all year round. Though the air was cool in the mornings and evenings, I didn't have to dress for snow or below-freezing temperatures.
The main north-south street of the city is Camino Del Mar, along a portion of which, near where we stayed, is an array of small shops and businesses and eating places that serve both visitors and local residents. (I've heard that Del Mar's population swells in the summer time when a race track opens.) As I walked along Camino Del Mar several times, I could turn my head, especially at intersections, and see the Pacific Ocean a few score yards to the west.
The city has an abundance of trees and plants that are green all year round and countless flowers growing here and there and in the lanes that run parallel to Camino Del Mar and the ocean.
I can see why people like to live here or come to visit. It's not over populated, the pace seems easy, and there's plenty to do outdoors. It's not an earthly paradise, however. Cars pass through all day long, there is no drug store or grocery store in the center of town, human tangles that occur elsewhere must also happen here, and as in other places, money-consciousness is prevalent. I saw only one church in my rambles and at a distance.
Still, I figured it was the kind of place where local artists would flourish. Sure enough, I found two galleries in a stylish complex called the Del Mar Plaza. One is an art center with the work of numerous artists and craftspeople on display.
Several had to do with horses, including one of a horse and jockey who won a legendary race in Del Mar. It wasn't hard to spot two large surfboards -- one encrusted with pebbles and shells and bits of colored glass, another was dark-colored and called "Glass Mosaic".
I saw a few ocean scenes, as I might have expected -- one of a sunset, another, semi-impressionistic, depicting children pouring water, while a stooping woman appears to put sand into bright-hued cartons. (One of Del Mar's beaches is cited as among the top ten in the world.)
Two artists evoked mist or fog. Both had two canvases on display. One pair was called "The Fog is Rolling In" -- pastels, rose and light blue, with undefined shapes and squiggles in different colors like drizzle on an appetizer or a dessert. The second set seemed particularly imaginative to me. "Mist in the Forest" consists of two panels with folded muslin squares pinned to canvas with black-headed nails. Fascinating.
The second gallery I visited, dedicated to the work of a single artist, showed a different approach to drawing on local phenomena -- large canvases with streams of eye-catching color of various widths and lengths that suggest movement and aspects of nature. Blue for sky or ocean. Orange for sunset. Black on white for nighttime or utility poles. Green for grass and trees. The artist works hard and fast, I suspect, and has developed an entrepreneurial gift for getting his work before the public and to potential buyers.
Now...as it happens, the friend I came to visit is also an artist who works in sculpture and painting, with New England scenes as well as southern California. I checked her website (bobbigibb.net ) and saw acrylics she'd done of the Torrey pine (unique to Del Mar), eucalyptus roots, a sea and sky scene, and an imaginative evocation of the ocean floor she has called "Underwater".
I've seen these pictures before. Now I find that they grow on me. Her sensitivity, the feeling she brings to her work, her care, her visual imagination, her attention to detail -- these all tell me that her pictures stand up well compared with others I saw in my visits to Del Mar galleries. What a treat! What an example of creativity!
