San Francisco, California Street

I was recently talking to a friend who had relocated near San Francisco and who had never before been to that city before. I was trying to summarize my various feelings about my favorite city, and found words completely inadequate to explain the sensations that grip me when I’m in San Francisco. Perhaps that’s why I’m an artist. The lights, the mood, the flying flags, and windswept wisps of fog, the bustling people and the quaint bits of architecture and charm that are San Francisco can perhaps best be captured on canvas!

Yet even this is inadequate, for a purely visual image cannot relate the ambient sounds and smells that are so much a part of the City by the Bay. For example, if you were standing at the location I painted here in San Francisco, A View Down California Street from Nob Hill, your ears would be filled with the sounds of clanging cable car bells, the whistle of hotel bellmen flagging taxis, and perhaps the lonely call of seagulls overhead. Likewise, if you took a deep breath you might notice the aroma of friend rice rising from Chinatown below, or perhaps the pungent smell of sourdough bread that seems at times to be omnipresent in San Francisco. But before I ramble on too much, perhaps I better just make plans to get back to San Francisco for another visit!