My first proper day of in LA and I devoted it to art. I awoke early and went out to draw in the little park across the way. There I wrote:
"I find this tree quite sexy. Its limbs seem nude, its knees scarred, its bare arms raised high and pulling up its rib cage. The skin is stretched smooth and tight over its bones. The whole creature seems vulnerable yet proud — exposed by my scrutiny yet far more permanent than the observer.
"Runners pant by in sweaty synthetic clothing — sucking in the crisp spring morning air, pounding in and out of the shafts of sunlight.
"My fountain open, dormant in its box through the winter, is still stiff and creaky with its first mouthful of ink."

I wandered north, stopping to draw odds and bobs, then ended up on the beach after stepping in a deep pool of left over rain. I stripped off my sodden shoes and socks and walked bare foot back up the shore, crossed the Pacific Coast Highway and looped back to my hotel.
I jumped in my rental car and headed up to the 405, stopping en route to check out three art supply stores: The Art Store ( we have one a block form my house in NY), Utrecht (as understocked as its sister on Lafayette Street) and a good but expensive shop called Graphis or something where I bought my new director pal Jim a Rapidoliner ( he has caught the drawing bug and is spending the weekend reading his new copy of Betty Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain") and myself an interesting new type of paper called Yupo (100% polypropylene and incredibly smooth yet designed for watercolors).
Eventually I made my maiden voyage to the Getty Museum (how do Angelinos deal with all this traffic? At the museum, there are so many cars one must line up to get into the car park, then line up to take a tram to the museum entrance; I could have made it to the Met and visited half the the exhibits in the same amount of time). It's a lovely museum though the art I liked best was in small supply: one Van Gogh ( the sublime 'Irises'), some Corots and Millets, a couple of Cezannes and Monets, and a handful of 18th century drawings.

Then I headed back into Santa Monica, picked up an extra second-hand copy of The Art Spirit, and went to two movies. One was the Cannes Festival's big winner, a wild Korean movie called Old Boy, the other a beautiful, sentimental Scottish film called Dear Frankie, that had me all misty and missing my family terribly.
Now I'm back in my room with a bottle of Dewars and too many work related emails so I think I'll log out and spend the rest of the evening with Robert Henri. Hopefully, tomorrow will leave me an opportunity to go to Zen meditation services and the MOCA.