When I was in high school, my freshman year, one of the teachers announced that all students could get into the museums in California for free with their student ID. I wasn’t really into art, some students were drawing skulls and surfers and we had a photo class that was pretty cool. After class, I strolled up to my teacher and asked him what was inside a museum. He told me to have my mom take me to one. Well, my mom was rarely home and she definitely wasn’t going to take me to a museum much less to school or any sporting event I was in. I was already ditching school to go surf once or twice a week, my friend was the attendance monitor and marked me present everyday and my grades were great.

I convinced my friend who just got his driver’s license to take me to the first museum I heard about, the Getty in Los Angeles. Just driving into the parking area was breathtaking and I immediately felt like I shouldn’t be there. We strolled up with our Student ID’s clutched tight in our hands and were greeted with white marble sculptures of really fit men posing. In my understanding at the time, art was something that people used to do before television. I had no idea that artists were painting currently and the glimpse of seeing new contemporary artists seemed like something only rich people did.

We ditched school a lot and went to Trestles surf spot where you had to cross these rail yard tracks, not get beat up by some angry local and sometimes literally fight for your wave. When we headed to Los Angeles to surf in El Porto, the riders would graciously let us take the waves and tell us the best times and days. It was a kind type of punk rock vibe compared to what we were used to. After we would all head up to the Getty to check out the art, make fun of the poses and outfits and it opened my world up from the pain of back home. I remember one of the surfers that was older, worked as a wine representative for Chateau St. Michelle, told me that the Impressionists painters were punk rock and started a radical movement by painting the way they did. He told me ‘Renoir was a pu**y compared to Monet.’ Yet, I believed in all the painters of that time, capturing light and shadow and breaking up their brushstrokes to present the feeling of magic much like Nirvana was distorting their sounds off of Link Wray and Robert Gordon’s blues and sounds… and the rabbit hole goes so deep.

Twenty-five years later, I am land-locked in New Mexico and occasionally surfing the Rio Grande River, I sold the above painting, “Paysage” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. During the discussion between the buyer and the seller I was mediating, the deal almost was dead as they couldn’t come to an agreement on shipping costs and it seemed impossible to do… when I found a quick moment of silence to interrupt with the Renoir quote I studied a moment before the call, “One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.” The seller and buyer both said, “did Renoir say that?” and I with a subtle challenge said, ‘yes, and we have to remember Renoir in this particular scenario’ and the deal was made. Ask me sometime about the delivery of this painting.