Monday, August 12, 2013

Echo Park

Rather obviously, this is a view of Echo Park looking toward downtown Los Angeles.  The lake was drained for a couple of  years, and has only recently completed restoration and refilling.   People are loving the park, and it was impossible to do any kind of faithful rendering of it that didn't have at least a few people. By chance, we crossed paths with the Barnsdall Park plein air painting class.  

I don't have a lot of really useful knowledge about Echo Park.  I'm not even sure where or if there's an echo.  I don't have any really interesting personal Echo Park stories either.  I ate a machaca burrito there around dusk one time.  The best Echo Park story is the recent one that everyone seems to have read or heard.  A man with a fondness for plants stole tubers from the famous lotus plants and nurtured and raised them.  A few years after that the park's lotuses pretty much died out, probably because of stuff that drained into the lake.  Then the city drained the lake and cleaned it and fixed it, including adding a water filtration system.  But there were no lotuses.  The old ones had been planted in the 1920s.  But the day was saved by the lotus thief.  He didn't exactly give the lotuses back, but he sold them at price of his asking.  There's a awful lot of them, and they are very beautiful.  They are outside the painting, to the left.

12 comments:

  1. I love how you painted the people. What a terrific location and morning for painting! Thank you!

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    1. Thanks Sherry. The people sort of worked; at least there weren't cars.

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  2. Seems like a lovely place to take a stroll.. What a thief indeed, he could have at least given them away! Loved the way you have brought the place for us to enjoy.

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    1. It is a lovely place for a stroll. There are also paddle boats for rent, and I think I'd like to try that so.

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  3. Lovely painting of Echo park. (I remember it from when I lived in SoCal. I am glad it has been cleaned up.) I like the skyline in the background and the people in the foreground. Nice work!

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    1. Thank you Jean. They did a nice job fixing the park - it took a long time and a lot of money, but I think it was worth it. Skylines tie a painting to a particular time and place.

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  4. What a lovely painting, Barbara; it has a pellucid calm.

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    1. Mise, pellucid is a new word for me. I think it will come in handy with watercolors.

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  5. you seem to know more about Echo Park then me - in that I didn't know about the "Lotus Thief"

    wonderful painting. After the windstorms a few years back took out a giant pine, I discovered I had a downtown view of the tallest of those sky scrapers

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    1. I also lost a huge pine behind my yard in those storms; there's only sky where it used to be. You might be able to see ocean, once in a rare while.

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  6. Oh wow, i love this one! It has a good feel to it just looking at it. I've never walked along Echo park - Another area to put on my list for day trips to.

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    1. It's a nice walk. I just looked it up and it's .8 miles around the lake.

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