Keni “Art” Davis depicts many of the changes in Altadena with a paintbrush.
A 75 -year -old Hollywood Set Painter, who has been involved in movies such as Ocean’s Eleven and TV programs such as “STAR TREK”, has been drawing Altadena’s watercolor for the past 40 years. man. He saw Lincoln Avenue’s liquor store replaced by coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques. Through all changes, he painted.
None of these changes were as tougher than those created by Eaton Fire in January.
Davigating the Ezel and the paint kit, Davis returned to the past paint. After the refugees fight the scorched landscape, they return home, artistically investigating the familiar landmark skeleton, and hopes to save some people. 。 Beauty and meaning through his brush.
Share
Share with close additional shared options
“I’m currently capturing destructive, but that’s what I want to do,” said Davis, when he started sketching Everest Burger on Friday on the Lake Avenue and East Mendo Sino Street. Ta. He was drawing a popular hamburger joint before the fire.
Davis is surprisingly optimistic if many people may rationally driven many people in the fog of depression. After his wife and his wife fled late in the first night of the Eaton fire, his house in 38 years became ash. In his studio, he maintained his art and also burned paintings made by his daughter Kentura Davis.
Davis is planning to rebuild his home, reproducing the destruction of the paper, painting stroke with a stroke, smiling and joking. He quotes Isaiah 61: 3 for aggression. He gives the crown of beauty for ashes. We praise a fun blessing instead of mourning and blessing instead of despair.
The series of paintings that Davis is working on is called “Beauty’s ash”. He wants to create an exhibition of artwork after the fire at some point. Paintings are not sold.
Before he moved to Altadena, Davis lived in Pasadena. He began to draw outside air when he was a child, and one of his art teachers took him and other students from the class. He fell in love with the style. He drew Pasadena in the 1970s and then moved there when he moved there in the 1980s. He wanted to be an architect for a while, but he noticed that he loved painting a building, but he liked to design a building.
Part of what Davis loves to work outside is an interaction with strangers when he is working. Davis usually said that it was open while drawing. Once in Hollywood, Davis provided money to a homeless man if a man could play something for him. To his shock, Davis said, Davis said, the man began to sing beautifully, to Davis that he was a Broadway singer in New York before moving to Los Angeles to work in the movie industry, but after his dreams flowed. I became homeless.
KENI “ARTS” Davis draws many of the changes in Altadena with a paint brush. The retired 75 -year -old movie set painter who worked in a movie like Ocean’s 11 and a show like STAR TREK said that he moved to this area as a younger man for the past 40 years. I have drawn. He saw Lincoln Avenue’s liquor store replaced by coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques. Through all changes, he painted. (Kent “Art” Davis)
When Davis drew a picture on Friday, a woman named Cindy approached him and told him how much his painting was in the community with her. Both vowed not to leave Altadena.
The interaction reminded Davis that he loved the neighborhood. Friendly neighbors, casual interactions, close properties of the community.
One of the things he noticed is how the fire colored the landscape. In the past, Davis’s paintings were filled with red and green. It was a lively color that captured the landscape and the building in it. Now it is almost mute brown and gray.
Davis has already returned to Altadena’s favorite spots and draws bodies such as post offices and hardware stores. On January 9th, Davis returned to his house, catching terrible trees, covered plants, and still a certain chimney with watercolor.
When he drew the rest of the Everest Burger, Lake Avenue, Altadena’s commercial street, was suffering from emergency workers. The Red Cross disaster relief truck was parked in a grocery store parking lot. The construction worker was digging a pipe on the street. The national guard soldier stood in camouflage trucks.
And the painter stood on a corner opposite the burned hamburger joint and recorded quietly with a paintbrush.
Keni Davis has lost his house, his art studio, and most of his paintings in Eaton Fire.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)