Canvas Rebel Interview
Q: "Janessa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?"
A: "I have just finished a painting that is incredibly meaningful to me. It’s a landscape/seascape view of the Malibu Pier as viewed from Surfrider Beach in Malibu. This project was initially a commissioned piece for my surf club, the Malibu Surfing Association.
The digital image of my painting, with custom graphics, will be licensed to the surf club and used for merchandise and marketing materials for our upcoming surf competition called the MSA Classic Invitational.
This international longboard surf competition is a historic event in itself as it is the longest running annual coalition event which began in 1961 at one of the world’s most iconic surf beaches.
After the tragic fires and mudslides that destroyed so much of our beautiful coastline earlier this year, our surf community was shaken to the core.
I was relieved to know our beach and the pier were not harmed in the fires but I didn’t know how soon we’d be able to return to our home away from home in Malibu.
The club is currently still waiting for our official permit approval from the city of Malibu to confirm the event is happening but we are moving forward on event planning in hopes that it will go on as usual.
I was initially ecstatic just to know that it was in the works and that surfers had officially returned to the beach.
The PCH closure made it very difficult for us to reach Malibu from the south for months, so we had only been up there a few times at that point. But my heart remained with Malibu on a daily basis, as I worked tirelessly on this painting from my studio in Huntington Beach.
I actually worked on several ideas for this project with multiple canvases in process before deciding on the final piece with my preferred composition and color scheme. I wanted it to really encapsulate the feeling of being on the sand in Malibu on a sunny day.
Being commissioned to work on this project has also been extremely flattering to me as an artist. Our club typically hires very well known and talented artists so I am honored to be considered at this level.
There is yet one more very personal level of meaning to this project for me.
As I flipped through my collection of photos of Malibu looking for an image that included both the iconic Malibu pier and the wall at Surfrider beach, I kept returning to one picture in particular. It was a photo I took of our sweet dog Lilly, who passed earlier this year at the age of fourteen.
I printed out this photo from 2021 to use as a reference for the final piece, so I quite literally had Lilly by my side, in the photo and in spirit, as I poured my heart into this piece.
Initially, I didn’t include Lilly in the image for the club, I simply left the beach in the foreground empty with several surfboards leaning on the wall and two waves curling toward the pier on the ocean, under a light blue sky with some fluffy white clouds overhead.
The empty space on the beach was intended to be filled with the text for the competition which I have now added using computer graphics over my hand painted image.
As of right now I am still waiting to confirm our title sponsor for the event before I finalize the exact verbiage for the competition image so that will be released at a later date.
Once the background was finished, my final step was to paint Lilly into the original painting in a celebration of our incredible girl.
Lilly was so much more than just a pet to us. She was our baby since 6 wks old and our best friend who was with us every day since then. She was also basically our mascot and definitely a local celebrity at the beach in Malibu, so it only feels right to commemorate her sweet spirit in a painting of her at the beach in Malibu.
The day I finished the painting was the first weekend the PCH had reopened. We took her ashes along with the painting to the beach in Malibu the next day. Dave and some of our close friends had an informal surfers paddle out for her at sunset as I watched from the beach along with many more of our friends.
My heart still aches, and probably always will, when I review the events of early 2025 but I definitely used this painting as a therapeutic process to pour my love for Malibu, and for my sweet Lilly, into a piece of art that will live on with all of us forever."
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