CMAppleton

Nameless

This painting is mixed media, the size is three feet by five feet. It is in the current Artworks show, titled MAX OUT. (Large paintings). I had a hard time naming this painting, I think because the theme is not consistent. It started out being about the plight of women, here and around the world. It was inspired by the reading I've been doing recently. Seems everything I've picked up dealt in some way with how women are used and abused and tossed aside when no longer useful. In the middle ages in Europe women were often forbidden to learn to read. In Eastern countries women were (some still are) not allowed to leave their homes without their husbands, or be in the presence of a man without a male family member present. In China, female babies are sometimes left to die, or killed by the parents. In India pregnant women get ultrasounds so they can abort the fetus if it is not male. Look at the havoc created by Henry VIII because he could not produce a male heir; caused thousands of deaths and altered the course of history. (Ironic that his daughter Elizabeth I was one of the greatest rulers England has ever known.) As I thought about all of these issues it started me thinking about modern women in western cultures, we seem to have it made. But then I thought to myself, if we feel so great about ourselves, why is it we only feel great if we look young and thin and beautiful? We spend so much on cosmetics and surgeries and clothes and wrinkle creams – it's in the trillions. Aging is a negative event. We are a culture that is preoccupied with what is on the surface – the fact that we value how we look over other things which one might think more important. Many of these ideas are in this painting. At one point I called it “Lipstick Values” meaning our values are about surface, superfluous, frivolous issues. But then I decided that title was dumb so I just called it Lipstick. That is even dumber. So it shall remain nameless at this point.

Santa Monica

This painting, called "Santa Monica" was inspired by a little decal I found from Pacific Ocean Park, a theme park that was right on the beach in Ocean Park, a community in Santa Monica. When I was in high school my friends and I used to pile in someone's car on an occasional Friday or Saturday night and take off for POP (pronounced 'pee oh pee.') We'd stay until it closed or until we ran out of money, though it cost less than a dollar to get in and all the exhibits (not the rides) were free (POP also meant 'pay only once'). If we ran out of money we could always go hang out on the beach, loved the beach at night (empty and quiet except for the sound of the breaking waves), especially when the red tide was in and the arc of the breaking waves glowed with phosphorescence under the moonlight.
The park had the only roller coaster I was willing to ride on (there was the Pike in Long Beach, only did it once on a dare, too scary). Both of these roller coasters had amazing views from the high points, though there wasn't much time to enjoy them. I am not sure why I felt safe on the POP roller coaster since I remember well on more than one occasion seeing pieces of it fall off while being jerked around a corner in one of those noisy little cars. There was a diving bell that was like being in an underwater elevator with portholes, made me nauseous with claustrophobia. A huge grotesque laughing head (the evil laughter resounded through the entire park the whole time you were there, never stopped) rested above the entrance to Davy Jone's Locker, a fun house that included a house of mirrors and a glass house to get lost in. There were also the makeout rides, with little cars on tracks that went inside dark exhibits like the 'Flying Dutchman.' The smells – cotton candy, candied apples, chili dogs, hot oil from french fries, the ocean, the machine oils from the rides, the sound of the laughing head, the breaking waves, the motors churning from the rides, the screams on the roller coaster – all these memories are still so clear – as if I could go back there tomorrow and it would all be the same. Though it ended in 1967, (is it really 40 years ago???). The city took it over for back taxes.
Today when I see paintings from Deibenkorn's Ocean Park series I am reminded of those fun times. He walked through Ocean Park daily from his house to his studio. I'm not sure if Ocean Park, the community, still exists. It may have been sucked up into Santa Monica proper. The paintings feel like the area, the colors, the shapes, you can almost smell the salty ocean when looking at his paintings. I don't know if he was interested in the theme park, maybe not, but It's fun to imagine he was milling around in there at the same time I was.