An Occidental beginning - "Paint the Town" - Plein Air in Seattle

To begin in Occidental Square was no accident. I saw it as a relatively calm place to start my creation of 16 plein air oil paintings of the Seattle area for a show scheduled at the Washington Athletic Club in May of 2026.

The dappled light from the overhanging sycamores shimmering on the brick. The gentle waves of folliage looming in shades of deep turquoise to bright lime. The rhythm of dark, lumpy tree trunks proceeding in rows back in space on either side. A tunnel of hovering light and shadow, with skin-smooth branches arching upwards, cathedral-like.

People would regularly stop to comment on my painting.

“Beautiful”, they would say, passing with a smile while carrying a shopping bag or making their way to lunch. This pleasantry was almost always accompanied by the distant sound of someone speaking grievances to the air: mutterings, musings, one-sided arguments that would sometimes mushroom into screaming. This was the soundtrack that framed every compliment of how “beautiful” my painting was of Occidental Square.

The people who frequented this area had probably blocked that soundtrack out long ago, while mildly startled groups of tourists shuttled behind the safety of their tour-guides.

The irony of my bourgeois plein air painting in proximity with those passed out in the sun with used needles scattered in the doorway was not lost on me. I was the interloper. Painting a pretty picture of what for many can be an ugly scene.

But I will not cast too large a gulf between us. The ones who daily frequent the square see it as a safe place to express, which is exactly why I decided to start my painting journey of Seattle here. We feel safe around one another. Temporarily, I am part of the scene. To the tourists I am but a spiffed up panhandler.

But here we all are. Today. The only day that will ever be. Expressing our now, in the way we know how. Letting agendas slip into the white noise of the city, while we kill time, and vice versa.