Paradoxically, California remains in my mind a paradise on earth, even though reality keeps chipping away at this image.
It goes back to the time when we'd just arrived from the scarcity and snow of '90s Russia struck by the economic crisis,
and to the California spring, sunshine, green hills, majestic ocean, and bright and picturesque San Francisco.
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There was only one homeless man in Palo Alto then, a sturdy suntanned old man, an image of dignity and harmony with the
environment.
During my first years here I was stunned by the natural beauty and it was the only thing I painted.
Gigantic trees, the hills, mountains, deserts, the rugged ocean shore. Quite some time had passed before I started
thinking about the people who live and have lived here, and those whose abandoned houses we encountered in the southern
California deserts as well as the rural North. Where are those people now?
One could write a book about the way everything has changed since then: the world, the climate, the life here and our
knowledge of it. I've realized now that for many it is a lost paradise, and I'm continuing my large cycle of
California Ghosts paintings about deserted and desolate homes, about people's broken ties with nature.
But even though forests are burning, the ocean is warming, many people have nowhere to live, still the image of the beautiful
California paradise remains with us, and we try to retain it while losing it.
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