Named after the famous and moving Beach Boys song, this painting captures the essence of our cabin home we had in Riverside, CA. Once Andrew’s grandfather’s weekend retreat— a workingman’s vacation home, it was a beautiful oasis in an otherwise somewhat hidden section of an unincorporated town of Meadowbrook, our Fortress of Solitude that we liked to escape to whenever we can–our blighted Giverny.

Until then I painted from my photos with yearning for the place we love. I really enjoy getting lost in foliage and rocks when painting from high density photos—-there is so much information that it is impossible to capture it all, but I try with my tiny brush, but also allow my imagination to fill in the gaps. I love Cézanne, and this one painting at the Met that has great rocks in it that you can tell he was thinking his thoughts when painting it as they bliss out into unconscious worlds, and this painting has one of the landscapes great rocks, that I allowed myself to do the same with in the hope it would transport my vision. Also, with Cézanne you can see what I call “Cézanne Holes” where his head must have been when he painted, as the optical space recedes back, and you can make out his facial features subliminally placed in the foliage. For me this is happening, a bit more like Van Gogh, everywhere in the image, in much of the trees, and foliage, etc., it breaks into iconic abstraction. Da Vinci would say we paint ourselves when we make portraits-but I also think we paint our “brains” when we make art—sometimes abstract paintings literally look like brains, or here, lost in the foliage, there is a lot of unconsciously realized other worlds that are taking flight within the parameters of the areas, I was thinking my thoughts and memories while painting.

This is one of the more surreal cabin paintings—perhaps inspired by the slightly melancholic afternoon atmosphere of a cool winter day. Sometimes at the cabin we felt blissfully lost in another world of our companionship and being in a place of our spirit and soul, and I like to think this painting is the essence of this dreamlike reality.