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This painting was a housewarming gift from the Delap family. We have a few prints that look like oil paintings, but they're mechanically printed, and bought from Target. This painting, however, is actually a unique, hand-painted oil on canvas work by R. Cooper.
Cooper uses atmospheric perspective and scale to give a sense of depth and distance in this painting in a very convincing way. The way the cliff face disappears near its base makes the water feel restless like it is generating mist as it churns.
The horizon, the line of the tide sweeping up the shore, and the line of the mountains all fall on a straight horizontal line, giving an overall mood of serenity. Then he uses long organic diagonals in the dunes and crashing waves to remind us that the ocean is ever moving. Each bird is set at a different diagonal. Combined with the sway of the reeds, we can feel the wind in the salt air.
The close, focused reeds in the lower left are well balanced by the cliff in the right. The eye glides off the dunes in the left down onto the beach and out of frame, leaving the viewer to wonder what the rest of the coast looks like. Does it wrap in a gentle arc out toward the cliffs? Is there a sunbathing couple just outside the frame?
Cooper effectively captures all that I love about the California coast; one of the major reasons I am unlikely to move away from California.
