Huntington Beach Bicentennial Watercolor, ©Alison McMahon 1976

The piece above is a watercolor painting done on the fourth of July in Huntington Beach the year of the United States Bicentennial. It was strangely uneventful and low-key. Now, twenty-one years later, it seems like it was a time imagined, but it wasn't. When I returned to California, I found that, not only had the beachfront area been deco-ized, but "Huntington Beach 4th of July" meant riots to most people, but to me, it always meant a beach close to Long Beach where I could go alone, have chips and salsa and summer salad, and lie on the beach with a book or paints, undisturbed and peaceful: most definitely a separate reality and I don't know how it came to be.


Time and Tide Watercolor Panel VI
© Alison McMahon 1977

This is one of my favorite watercolor panels from the "Time and Tide" series because of the duck waterballet that takes place on the high tide after a rain. The panels were random--12 to 24 squares in each, the colors of which were determined by the weather and the moon.


I sat out a Long Beach run and did these two little watercolor sketches of South Bay/Santa Monica Bay on location in Palos Verdes. Since they were painted simultaneously, from the same point, they fit together when done.




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This page is created and maintained by Alison McMahon © 1997
Last modified 21 January 1999