The Way to LA
1994
Mixed media on canvas
8" x 8"
20.3cm x 20.3cm
About the work
A fisheye-distorted view down the aisle of a train car, painted from a sketch made during an Amtrak trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 1994 — one of the artist's first solo trips outside San Francisco. The warm, tunnel-like interior of the train — curved ceiling ribs, receding seat-backs — frames a single rounded, lens-like window opening onto a cooler, brighter landscape of rolling green hills, oak trees, a golden rocky outcrop, and blue sky. The window's shape, rather than the landscape or interior, was the driving compositional element; the surrounding scene was constructed to support that shape rather than transcribed from direct observation. The fisheye logic derives from skate-video visual memory rather than any camera or photographic reference — consistent with the perspective language running through the artist's other 1993–96 oils.
Visual Similarity
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Related Patterns
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Art/Official sessions
The Way to LA — Art/Official session, August 15, 2026
This is a copy of the session record, August 15, 2026. Canonical URL: /sessions/the-way-to-la-2026-08-15.
Transcript
- Art/Official
Three orientation questions before the blind description: 1) Temporal distance — how far back does this one feel? 2) Series relationship — where does this sit within the OG Oil Paintings for you? 3) Physical location — do you know where this painting is right now?
- Artist
Pretty distant, was a long time ago and part of when I first started painting. Was part of the original oil painting series and part of the fisheye period. I don't know where it is anymore or who has it, last seen in 94 or so, so maybe gave it to somebody.
- Art/Official
Blind first description request.
- Artist
This is a painting of the view on a train when I took the Amtrak to LA from SF.
- Art/Official
Anything else that comes to mind — any particular part of the view, what the trip was about, how it felt to paint it?
- Artist
Was one of the first trips I took outside of San Francisco on my own, and used a super fisheye perspective to paint it.
- Art/Official
Vision analysis presented: fisheye-warped train car interior, rounded lens-like window shape, warm interior vs cool exterior landscape, centered aisle vantage. Questions: was the window shape a conscious choice or emergent from the fisheye rendering; does the interior/exterior contrast read as confinement vs freedom or was it purely observational.
- Artist
I think the painting wasn't painted on the train, so this was a painting I made from the sketch that I made on the train. Yeah, the fisheye was something I was working with in other painting and I guess I just noticed this angle on the train, looking forward and backwards. I think the outside and inside are more imagined than true to the scene.
- Art/Official
Follow-up: what got changed/embellished from the actual scene — landscape, window shape, interior, or all of it? Was the aisle vantage deliberately chosen for the fisheye symmetry, or just what was in front of you?
- Artist
I don't remember what it looked like, but I think I was more focused on the shape of the window, so just wanted to paint the other part to fit. And I think I just was on a long train ride and realized this fisheye scene.
- Art/Official
Question: did you have an actual fisheye lens/photos as reference, or working purely from skate video memory? Was the solo trip connected to why you started painting from it, or coincidental?
- Artist
No camera, just the skate video references. I don't think the trip was specific to the painting and would have found itself somewhere else.
- Art/Official
Self-assessment questions: honest assessment now, thirty-plus years out — accomplished, experiment, student work? Any sense of where the painting went?
- Artist
Not sure, I think the idea still holds up, don't have the paintings so don't know if the technique was good, maybe not so much, but definitely thought of it as a successful painting at the time. I think it still holds up, but would still think of it as an early experimental one.
- Art/Official
Pressed further on provenance guess, and asked: does this connect to other catalogued early oils (Space Time, Nature vs Nurture, The End) through fisheye logic or subject/mood? Anything else before formal close?
- Artist
I think I probably gave it to somebody. Yeah, I think it connects in the fisheye thing, but didn't have the idea behind it that the other ones, so more representational.
Expand full conversation
- Art/Official
Formal re-ask for the record: how would you describe this painting now, in a few sentences?
- Artist
A successful early painting in the fisheye period
Vision Analysis
A fisheye-distorted view down the interior aisle of a train car, oil on canvas, 8" x 8". The vehicle's structure — ceiling ribs, seat-backs receding on both sides, the aisle floor — bows outward in a barrel-like curve consistent with wide-angle/fisheye lens logic. At center, a single window is rendered not as a rectangle but as a rounded, elongated oval, almost eye- or lens-shaped, outlined in warm yellow-ochre. Through it: rolling green hills, scattered oak trees, a golden-brown rocky outcrop, and a blue sky with white clouds and small distant birds. The interior is rendered in warm browns and umbers, tunnel-like and enclosing, contrasting with the cooler blues and greens of the landscape glimpsed through the window. The vantage is centered and symmetrical, looking straight down the aisle. Signed 'B.'94' lower right.
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