The San Francisco Bay panoramic view: bridge, skyline, water, and light, rendered in encaustic across a long horizontal format. The city has been painted many times; encaustic finds in it something still new.

San Francisco Panoramic

An imagined aurora fills the sky in radiant ribbons of green and violet, built up in encaustic layers that give the light an almost physical presence. What the eye cannot hold, the wax does.

Aurora Imagined

A peacock in full display, its iridescent eye-spotted train spread wide. Encaustic is ideal for this 

Peacock on Display

A field of poppies at their peak, the orange vivid against green stems. One of the larger works, its scale matching the ambition of the subject.

Poppy Field

Oregon's wildflower meadows with Mount Hood rising white in the distance, the mountain's permanence set against the seasonal abundance below. Painted in encaustic layers that preserve the scene's depth and spaciousness.

Flower Field Under Mount Hood

California's winter hills carpeted in wild mustard, their yellow brilliant against the dark green of the wet season. The encaustic surface gives the scene a warmth that the landscape itself also carries, unexpectedly, in January.

Fields of Mustard

First light filters through a dense forest canopy, its warmth captured in translucent encaustic layers that seem to glow from within. The trees emerge slowly from morning shadow, the way the eye adjusts.

Alone in the Forest Sunrise

The drooping heart-shaped blooms of bleeding heart, each one a perfect small pendant, rendered in translucent encaustic layers of rose and white. The name is melodramatic; the flower is not.

Bleeding Hearts

A loosely arranged bouquet, bright and informal, caught in the moment before it finds a vase. Encaustic gives the petals a depth that other media rarely achieves 

Bouquet to Go

A monarch butterfly rendered with an engraving-like precision, its wing patterns drawn into the encaustic surface before being fused. The result is both painting and drawing, both ancient technique and close observation.

Engraved Monarch

Fibroblast

Fiftieth Anniversary

The sky on fire at sunset, its oranges and magentas captured in fused wax that holds color with a particular luminosity. Encaustic was made for this 

Fire in The Sky

Oakland's hills veiled in the marine layer that rolls in off the bay most mornings, the city's edges softened and its light gone silver. Encaustic's semi-translucent layers suit the subject perfectly.

Fog Over Oakland

A composition of birds understood as symbols of fortune across many cultures 

Good Luck Birds

Architectural ornament in the Gothic tradition 

Gothic Decorations

The rich folds and drape of green fabric, its movement frozen in encaustic layers that catch the light as actual cloth would. An exercise in pure paint: form, color, and texture without narrative.

Green Abstract Fabric (on paper)

The artist's recurring heart motif lifts above a field of orange poppies, the encaustic sky luminous around it. Love and California wildflowers 

Heart Rising Over Poppy Field

The heart motif over the rolling hills of Tuscany, its golden browns and sage greens recognizable to anyone who has seen that landscape. Encaustic gives the hills their dusty, afternoon-light warmth.

Heart Rising Over Tuscany

The heart ascends above open water, the ocean rendered in deep encaustic blues and the horizon kept clean. A small painting with simple ambitions 

Heart Rising Over the Ocean

Oregon's dominant peak beneath the ascending heart, the mountain's permanence set in counterpoint to what the heart signifies. Encaustic layers give the snow cap its cold, flat light.

Heart Rising over Mount Hood

A form embraced by clouds, the encaustic medium's translucency giving the clouds a softness that feels genuinely atmospheric. To be surrounded by clouds is to be held by something vast and gentle.

Hugged by Clouds

A close study of a ladybug on branch, encaustic's layering allowing the shell's lacquered red to glow. The title admits what the painting knows 

Lady Bugs Me

A field of lavender stretches to the horizon, its purple rows built up in luminous encaustic layers that capture the flower's sun-warmed haze. The ancient medium and the ancient crop share something 

Lavender Field

Autumn leaves mid-fall, their descent caught and held in encaustic. The turning colors 

Leaves are Falling

A microscopic-inspired composition: the cellular structures of citrus, their essential geometry made visible and beautiful. The sour and the sweet of lemon and lime, translated into pigment and wax.

Lemon Lime Organelles

A lemon tree laden with fruit, the yellow of the lemons vivid against green leaves. Encaustic's saturated quality suits the painting's sense of abundance.

Lemon Tree

A single tree standing in snow, its bare branches making their own drawing against a white sky. Winter stillness 

Lone Snow Tree

Milagros on Green

A collector's arrangement of butterfly specimens, each one rendered in precise encaustic detail that captures the wings' patterns and iridescence. The reminder that beauty was once alive.

My Butterfly Collection

Homage to Monet's poppy fields: the dappled light, the color pressing in from all sides. Encaustic gives the poppies Monet's luminosity through a different material logic.

Poppy Field after Monet

Red Poppies

A single red poppy rendered with care, its petals cupped and its center visible. Encaustic's surface invites inspection 

Red Poppy

The vivid red exterior walls of a Mexican building, their paint aged and weathered in ways that encaustic can render with surprising accuracy. Color that has lived through decades of sun.

Red Siding in Mexico

Trees reflected in still water, the mirrored image as precise as the real one. Encaustic layers give the reflection a depth that makes the boundary between above and below unclear.

Reflected Trees

The spent seed pods of various plants lying in bare earth, their architecture intricate and their season over. A quiet study of what remains after bloom, rendered with close attention.

Seed Pods in the Dirt

A marshland in stillness, the reeds and grasses built up in encaustic layers that give the scene its particular quiet. Tranquility rendered visible.

Serinic Marsh Land

An abstract composition in spiral movement, the forms built up in encaustic layers that give the spiral its physical energy. Things expanding 

Spiraling Out

A world encountered and a self transformed, held in encaustic color and form. The title evokes passage 

Spirited Away

A cross-section of papaya, its seeds arranged in a perfect natural star, captured in tropical warmth. The fruit's interior 

Star Papaya

Aurora and stars together: the celestial light show rendered in encaustic blues and greens that glow with an inner warmth. Named for the star-born dawn.

Stella Aurora

The sun rising over open water, its light building from the horizon in encaustic layers that capture the dawn's particular gradient of color.

Sunrise Over the Ocean

Taken Away

Tree of Persistence

Trees at dawn, their forms silhouetted or lit depending on their angle to the rising light. A small painting that holds a large moment.

Trees Sunrise

The window of a Tuscan farmhouse, their shutters and sills and the light they frame rendered in encaustic. The view through a window is always partly about the window itself.

Windows on Tuscany

Every spring the Wooden Shoe Farm in Woodburn, Oregon opens its fields - 40 acres of tulips in every color, Mount Hood visible on clear days. Painted plein air at the festival, the light changing as the morning burned off the haze. Oil on canvas.

Plein air in progress

Archival reprint, 11"x14"

Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

Winner - 2024 Leimert Park Jazz Festival Art Competition

Leimert Park in Los Angeles has been the heartbeat of Black arts and culture on the West Coast for decades. This painting captures the energy of an evening in the park - the way live jazz moves through a crowd, the rhythm of the street. Winner of the 2024 Leimert Park Jazz Festival Art Competition.

Rhythms of Leimert Park

South Falls at Silver Falls State Park - Oregon's most visited state park - painted plein air on a quiet morning before the crowds arrived. The falls drop 177 feet behind a basalt ledge wide enough to walk under. Oil on panel.

South Falls, Silverton, Oregon

Cascading wisteria in full bloom - the drooping racemes painted with the same layered translucency the flower itself seems to have. The original is in a private collection.

Wisteria

Painting study of the original The Two Fridas

The Two Fridas

A garden of dahlias in full late-summer bloom, their layered petals composing a symphony of color from deep crimson to pale gold. Dahlias are among the few flowers that grow more complex the longer they bloom.

Dahlia Symphony

A weathered vintage truck stands as an accidental monument to the American West, its rust and sun-bleached surfaces telling decades of desert stories. Found near an abandoned homestead in the California high desert.

El Truko

A vintage automobile, frozen in time, rests in an abandoned ghost town. The passage of decades has turned it into unintentional sculpture — rust, dust, and desert light conspiring to make something beautiful.

Ghost Town Coupe

Classic Venetian gondolas bob gently on a quiet canal before the morning tourist crowds arrive, their ornate ferro prows reflected in still water. This is Venice as it has looked for centuries.

Gondolas Of Venice

The vibrant jewel-toned flowers of the Pride of Madeira plant — each tiny bloom a gem in purple and violet — catch the morning light along the California coast where this Mediterranean plant has naturalized.

Jewels Of Pride Of Madeira

A solitary ladybug makes her way along a bare winter branch, a small burst of crimson against a pale landscape. Ladybugs overwinter in clusters but occasionally emerge alone on warmer days.

Ladybug On Winter Branch

A single lotus blossom rises from still water, its pink petals unfurling in perfect peace. The lotus has been a symbol of purity and enlightenment for thousands of years — its roots in mud, its flower in light.

Lotus Serenity

The core of our galaxy arches over Joshua Tree's Hidden Valley, a river of stars flowing between the iconic Jumbo Rocks formations. The Mojave Desert's low humidity and sparse population make it one of California's best stargazing destinations.

Milky Way Over Hidden Valley

A lone Joshua Tree — found only in the Mojave Desert — reaches upward toward the full sweep of the Milky Way in this long-exposure night photograph. These trees can live for hundreds of years.

Milky Way Over Joshua Tree

Rolling Tuscan hillsides wrapped in morning mist, with a lone cypress-lined road disappearing into soft golden haze. This landscape has been painted, photographed, and written about for centuries — and still surprises.

Mists Of Tuscany

Oakland's downtown skyline floats above a dense marine layer that fills the bay, creating the striking illusion of a city built on clouds. This view from the hills requires patience — the fog must be deep enough to cover the bay but thin enough to clear the buildings.

Oakland In A Sea Of Clouds

Delicate Arch At Dawn 

A Paper Kite butterfly — its wings like translucent stained glass in white and black — rests on a tropical flower in full bloom. Found throughout Southeast Asia, the Paper Kite is one of the largest and most graceful of the brush-footed butterflies.

Paper Kite In Bloom

A remarkable annular solar eclipse captured at its peak, the ring of fire hovering above a winding desert trail. During an annular eclipse, the moon is too far from Earth to fully cover the sun, leaving a glowing ring.

Path Beneath The Annular Sun

Towering wind turbines stand sentinel on the California prairie, their blades turning slowly against a wide, open sky. The same winds that once drove the great cattle drives now power tens of thousands of homes.

Prairie Giants

A male bird of paradise in full courtship display, his plumage an explosion of iridescent color arranged to maximize impact. These birds spend years perfecting their displays before attracting a mate.

Royal Display

A great blue heron stands motionless at the edge of a glassy pond, patient and perfectly still in the early morning quiet. Great blue herons can stand without moving for thirty minutes or more while waiting for fish to come within reach.

Sentinel Of The Still Waters

Rolling hills of San Luis Obispo County carpeted in spring wildflowers after a wet winter, the landscape rippling with lupine, poppies, and mustard. The Central Coast's wildflower displays are among California's most spectacular.

Spring Fields Of San Luis Obispo

Dramatic storm light breaks through the clouds above Avila Beach Pier, casting a golden spotlight on the Pacific and painting the century-old wooden pier in warm amber. These windows of light last only seconds.

Storm Light Over Avila Pier

The Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse — known locally as the Walton Lighthouse — stands firm as a winter storm churns the surf around it, waves breaking white against the concrete tower at the Santa Cruz harbor mouth.

Storm Watch At Walton Lighthouse

Colorful surrey bikes line the Pismo Beach boardwalk on a bright afternoon, their fringed canopies catching the sea breeze. Pismo has offered these four-wheeled pedal carriages for decades — one of the California coast's enduring simple pleasures.

Surrey Bikes Of Pismo Beach

A tiny metallic sweat bee works the lavender-blue spires of Russian Sage, her compact body dusted with pollen. Sweat bees are among our most important pollinators and among our most beautiful — often overlooked because of their small size.

Sweat Bee On Russian Sage

The famous Lone Cypress at Pebble Beach — perhaps California's most photographed tree — clings to its granite perch above Carmel Bay. Estimated to be over 250 years old, it has been a protected landmark since 1990.

The Lone Cypress

The Manhattan Beach Pier extends into a twilight sky ablaze with color, the Pacific glowing purple and rose below. The pier, rebuilt after a 1913 storm, has been a gathering place on the South Bay for over a century.

Twilight At Manhattan Beach Pier

An ancient bristlecone pine — possibly thousands of years old — gnarled and sculpted by centuries of high-altitude wind and weather, persists where almost nothing else can. These trees survive precisely because they grow so slowly.

Twisted Survivor Of The Canyon

A White-Lined Sphinx moth hovers hummingbird-like above Sweet William flowers, its wings a sustained blur of motion. These moths are often mistaken for hummingbirds and, like them, can hover in place while feeding.

White Lined Sphinx Among Sweet Williams

Blue Morpho's Secret Eyes

A bold Zebra Longwing butterfly — Florida's official state butterfly — rests on bright Lantana blossoms in dappled garden light. Unlike most butterflies, Zebra Longwings can digest pollen, giving them a lifespan of several months rather than weeks.

Zebra Longwing On Lantana

A vivid Crimson Patch Longwing butterfly feeds on a cluster of Lantana blooms, its scarlet and black wings spread wide. Lantana's dense flower clusters make it a favorite nectar source for longwing butterflies throughout their range.

Crimson Patch Longwing On Lantana

Two Bufflehead ducks mid-courtship on glassy water, their iridescent plumage catching the morning light in perfect symmetry. These smallest of North American diving ducks are rarely this still.

Bufflehead Ballet

Backlit Sentinel'Cap Rock Under the Stars

San Francisco Bay catches the last golden light of late afternoon, the water transformed into hammered gold under a blazing sky. From this angle, the bay becomes less a body of water than a mirror for the sun.

Bay Of Gold

The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels precision flight team roars over the Golden Gate Bridge during Fleet Week, the F/A-18 Hornets trailing vapor against an October sky. Fleet Week has drawn this kind of spectacle to the bay since 1981.

Blue Angels Over The Golden Gate

The Bay Bridge's new eastern span alongside its predecessor, a photograph about time, engineering, and the bay's constant presence beneath both. The old span was demolished after the new one opened in 2013.

Bridging Two Eras

Fourth of July fireworks burst over San Francisco Bay in a long-exposure reflection of light and color, the display mirrored in the dark water below the Bay Bridge.

Fireworks Over The Bay

The Golden Gate Bridge photographed from the Marin Headlands, framing the bay and the city skyline beyond. Completed in 1937, it was for decades the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Gateway To The Pacific

A spectacular sunburst erupts through a break in the storm clouds over San Francisco Bay, flooding the choppy water with light in a shaft that lasted only a few minutes.

Golden Burst Over The Bay

The Golden Gate Bridge partly veiled in the famous San Francisco fog, the south tower visible while the north disappears into the marine layer. The bridge was specifically painted international orange to remain visible in this fog.

Golden Gate In The Mist

A full harvest moon rises enormous and orange above the San Francisco Bay, its reflection stretching across the water between the Bay Bridge's lights. The harvest moon's low trajectory through the atmosphere makes it appear far larger than it is.

Harvest Moon Over The Bay

The moon rises perfectly framed between the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate in this carefully timed photograph. Predicting this alignment requires calculating the moon's exact position weeks in advance.

Moonrise Between Two Bridges

A wide view of the entire bay system from elevation above the marine layer, the bridges tracing silver lines across the blue water, the city a cluster of white on the peninsula tip.

The Bay Beneath The Clouds

DSC03766'101217 Fire'suns

Muted blues and grays carry the weight of open water 

Atlantic Crossing

A vintage locomotive arrives through autumn color, warm ochres and rust bleeding into the surrounding foliage. History and movement, rendered in layered watercolor washes.

Autumn Arrival on Time

A weathered coastal shack in the fishing village of Salter Path, North Carolina, painted with the loose, direct strokes of plein air watercolor. Salt air and sun-bleached wood, caught before the light changed.

The Crab Shack, Salter Path

A richly layered composition where color and form do the work of language. The title suggests a return 

The Vision Returns

Crashing surf along a coastline painted in layers of emerald, teal, and seafoam white. The painting holds the particular quality of Atlantic coastal light 

Emerald Isle 

Flame Lily Radiance

Soft morning light falls across ornate majolica pottery, the rich glazes catching warmth and shadow. A quiet still life painted with the unhurried attention of early hours.

Morning Light on Majolica

A lone saguaro stands against a wide desert sky, quiet and monumental. The painting captures the particular stillness of the high desert 

Sentinel of the High Desert

The Spirit of Santa Monica

A familiar landscape seen from a place of belonging 

The View from Home

A careful still life study of a classic Wedgwood jasperware pitcher 

Wedgwood Jasperware Pitcher

A close study of canna lilies, their petals unfolding in vivid reds and burnt oranges. The transparency of watercolor suits the luminous quality of the blooms 

Imad Obegi

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