Normal Heights

15 Jul 2019 | Works

It is actually weirder than you’d think.

Welcome to my new painting series, “Normal Heights”!

Normal Heights is our home away from home, it is where we’re living during our two-year adventure in California.

In this series of nine paintings, I want to paint California how I like it. If you have followed my work, then you know that there’s always a little twist to what I paint. So of course, the twist to “Normal Heights” is that it’s actually not entirely normal. There’s a bunch of un-normal, weird little things going on here.

I have to confess that I am actually not a huge fan of starting this series by painting the ‘Normal Heights’ street sign. My hubby really likes it, but I couldn’t quite see the un-normal twist in it. After I struggled with the idea for a couple of days, suddenly an idea came knocking. I remembered the California grizzly bear that’s painted on a building on Adams Avenue, and which is also part of the flag of California. I realised: this is it, this is the twist I needed, the California grizzly bear crossing the street.

The last thing I want to mention is the propeller plane that’s zipping through the sky. We don’t actually see them a lot here in Normal Heights (they can be seen taking off from a little airport a few Kilometers north from here) but I wanted to include it because this is one of my dreams: I want to fly around San Diego on a prop plane before we leave!

BEHIND THE SCENES...

THIS IS WHAT THIS PAINTING COULD LOOK LIKE ON YOUR WALL

Something a bit old, but the ideas are still new