By Rebecca Nordquist
San Clemente Times
With paintbrush in hand, two local artists with two different styles share the same agenda: raising awareness of disappearing open space through art
Where are you right now? Flipping through the newspaper at home, work or your favorite coffee shop? Wherever it may be, take a moment to consider what the land you’re now standing on looked like before it was developed. It was likely covered with coastal sage shrub or, farther inland, maybe cattle grazed where you now park your car. It’s the memories of those open spaces that California artists have captured and preserved in their art since the early 1900s.
And those efforts still continue through individual artists and, at a collaborative level, with The Irvine Museum. In the mid-’90s, Joan Irvine Smith, president of The Irvine Museum, recognized the power behind these paintings. Through invite-only plein air competitions—competitions where artists paint scenes outdoors—Irvine Smith has helped raise awareness of land preservation with Californians and governmental agencies alike.
And San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano are home to two artists who are involved in this movement: Rick Delanty and Kevin Short, respectively. Though Delanty and Short have two contrasting curriculum vitae—one taught locally for 32 years while the other has made a living as a full-time artist—and differing artistic styles, they share one common goal: preserving open space through their art. The following are portraits of these two artists who use paint to speak up for the preservation of the area’s natural resources.
Rick Delanty
"Things are changing rapidly and the paintings reflect not only what’s going on now, but what’s gone on before,” says Rick Delanty, 56, who’s witnessed plenty of change in San Clemente since he moved here in 1974 after graduating from University of California at Santa Barbara. “And even if things change, for example, when Marblehead becomes a shopping center and homes are built, it will be essential to remember what that was so people can decide what balance they would like to strike between how much open space we should have, how much we should have for development and how much can this acreage we call San Clemente really sustain.”
And Delanty’s landscape art has been reflecting these matters for some 17 years—a time when he realized that San Clemente was “far from ordinary,” he says. “I could see that a series of paintings of San Clemente would be held together by its Mediterranean charm, the cleanliness of the environment, the vision of its founder and the quality of life it can afford its residents.
“I also arrived at landscape because I see God being most evident there,” continues Delanty, who’s also a member of Christians in the Visual Arts. “I can see that the land and the sky is really the kingdom that He’s created, and He’s the ultimate author and artist of all of that.”
But even at that point, painting was secondary to Delanty. He was teaching art full-time at San Clemente High School (SCHS)—a position he retired from last year after 32 years—and he and his wife, Lynn, who’s taught at SCHS for 24 years, were starting a family. So it wasn’t until the past year—with retirement and his two daughters Michelle, 20, and Lisa, 17, grown—that Delanty’s been able to concentrate truly on painting for preservation and conservation. “The biggest thing that I’ve become associated with recently that’s helped me do that is exhibitions hosted and presented by Joan Irvine Smith [president of The Irvine Museum],” says Delanty, who participated in Irvine Smith’s Capistrano Light Plein Air Art Exhibition and Sale that showed at Casa Romantica last November. “These exhibitions are direct hits on the relation of art to the preservation of natural resources.”
And this alignment is just what Delanty needed to spark something he had been doing on his own “on a more limited basis.” “Mrs. Smith,” he adds, “has been the main connection for me being able to do that. She created a whole foundation to do exactly what we’re talking about: inviting artists to paint areas where there could be a sale of paintings that would not only raise awareness of the area, but also benefit monetarily [the efforts to preserve the areas].”
For Delanty the idea of painting for preservation is quite simple. “Awareness is first and that’s what photography and painting bring to this situation—especially in an area like San Clemente where it’s growing so much. People might be willing to sacrifice an area or have it fulfill another use if they don’t really know what’s there. And that’s one way I think landscapes help educate people so they know what they have.”
View Delanty’s art at www.delantyfineart.com.
11th Annual Show and Sale: “Preserving San Clemente in Paint”Delanty Studio & Gallery
June 15, 6 p.m.–10 p.m.; June 16–17, 1 p.m.–9 p.m. 2510 Via Durazno, 949.492.8995, www.delantyfineart.com
This weekend Rick Delanty opens his home to display his paintings and help bring awareness to a subject that he’s been painting for almost two decades: disappearing open space. “It’s really all about balance,” he says. “What is the character of San Clemente versus the needs of the people who live there? Whatever happens the paintings and the photographs will reflect that: the changes, the growth, the development, the preservation effort. And that’s the focus of this show—and that’s why I called it ‘Preserving San Clemente in Paint.’”
Kevin Short
"Grassroots is kind of word-of-mouth—and this is the only thing I can say,” says San Juan Capistrano artist Kevin Short, looking around his upstairs home studio that’s lined floor to ceiling with paintings of Trestles, the Headlands and the Ortegas, among others. He sits on the couch and explains how he uses his paintings to help preserve open space—specifically Trestles. “I’m trying to help people fall in love with the area for preservation,” he continues as the voices of his wife, Amy, and young sons trail up the stairs. “I used to drive around and see surveyor stakes up on a field and that would be the alarm—and I’d be there that afternoon to paint it. ”
As a native San Diegan, Short, 46, grew up traveling the coast with his family—living as far north as Santa Barbara—surfing since high-school age and sailing often into Dana Point. “As a kid, I used to look at old photographs, a couple hundred years old, and they would be black-and-white,” says Short, who graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1984 and has worked as a full-time artist since, “and if you wanted to know what things actually looked like, you’d look at the colored paintings. It was cool to me.”
It was this time that served as the catalyst for what he now sees as his onus: painting the area around Trestles in hopes of stopping the proposed Foothill-South 241 Toll Road. “I’ve painted Trestles for about 15 years, but it was seven or eight years ago when I was just short of panic,” says Short, who’s been involved in The Irvine Museum’s plein air competitions since the late ’90s. “I saw an old map and they’d been planning on putting a road there for decades and decades. I thought, ‘This place is just going to go away.’ I realized there was a small, little, thin opportunity to prevent the State Park from being given away.”
So he began painting “in earnest,” he says, and, in the meantime, gained a following who could relate to his art and appreciate the subtle messages. Some of these paintings, in fact, are worth tens of thousands of dollars. “I’m just an artist; I’m not really an activist,” he contends. “I don’t even know if environmentalists call me an environmentalist.
“I’m not against roads. I’m against giving away the State Park and paving down the conservancy. It’s not just a San Clemente or San Diego County issue, it’s a state issue—if not bigger. And I don’t know if that message is out or not.”
It’s a message, however, that’s conveyed in his new art book, Trestles, a 28-page glossy book he created with friends and publishers Mike Evans, author, and Jeff Girard, art director of The Surfer’s Journal. The first in a series, Trestles, stands out as one of Short’s “small, little, thin” efforts to remind people of the vast resource tucked away between Orange and San Diego counties.
And if art for preservation is the only thing Short can say, then, it’s well said.
Trestles is now available for $20 (plus shipping) on www.kevinashort.com or www.amazon.com.
Trestles Book Launch and Signing
The Surf Gallery, 911 S. Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach, 949.376.9155, www.thesurfgallery.com
Friday, June 15, 6 p.m.–10 p.m.
With paintings by Kevin Short and photography by Jeff Divine, photo editor at The Surfer’s Journal; Larry “Flame” Moore, late photo editor of Surfing; Herbie Fletcher; Jason Murray, former photo editor of Surfer; and John Severson, founder of Surfer, among others, The Surf Gallery hosts a book launch and signing for Short’s new art book, Trestles, and—more importantly, helps raise awareness for the preservation of Trestles. “The show is not about me; the show’s about Trestles,” says Short. “With this group of artists, the thing we all have in common is we all love that place and out of that love is what we’re creating.” Books will be available for $18.95 plus tax, and Short will sign them, too. Show runs through July 18.
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