Capturing Laguna Beach In a Poster Is Hard To Do!

It felt like a monumental task to create a poster of Laguna Beach.

How could I possibly incorporate all of it in just one painting? On yet another day in paradise, I took to the town with my handy little G-11 Canon camera and set about photographing everything I thought should be in this poster. I knew I wasn’t going to get it all in, but I wanted to capture highlights the best I could.

What I really needed was a helicopter! When you stand out on , the town doesn’t look the way I portrayed it in the poster. The actual view is more squat than this, and decidedly horizontal. What I had to do is create a “character” of the town as I saw it. With my 85 photos, I began the arduous task.

What I love about Laguna is the sense of fun that it evokes. In Laguna, you can be yourself and not worry about it. Because Laguna is an artist colony, people here feel they have the right to create themselves the way they want to, and I love the diversity that comes from that notion.

Using my imagination, I pretended that I was in a helicopter looking down at the city from over the ocean. It was easy picking out what I wanted to be in the painting. The hard part was taking things out.

As I painted the poster, I was flooded with sweet memories of growing up in Laguna. As a kid, I often roamed the hills above the Festival of Arts. Our house was up there, so I had to put that in the painting. (It's the white one with the orange tile roof.) My cousin Jeff and I knew every little cave and cranny on that hillside! I used to ride on the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle all along the ridge of the opposite hillside, too. The view of Laguna from there is breathtaking.

In the summer, I’d swim with my girlfriend Leslie from to Main Beach. We’d visit every lifeguard walking home along the different beaches. I had to put all three Summer Festivals in Laguna. I’ve exhibited in all of them. My family owned and operated the Binocular and Blanket concession at the Pageant of the Masters for 45 years, so I had to put “the bowl” in! A man used to always sit on that bench in front of , so I couldn’t leave him out either!

It wasn’t easy creating Laguna in a nutshell, but I did. If you look closely, you’ll find all sorts of treasures in this poster. Gary from the in Laguna said the graphics have to be big, since everything else is so small.

I sell the poster to as many locals as I do visitors! If you want one, they are for sale at in Laguna Beach.

I haven’t parted with the original yet. I’m hoping it will be a collectors item someday! We’ll see. My favorite line that we artists have is, “Ya never know!”—but I do know one thing, and that’s that I love Laguna, and capturing it is an honor.