The Sunset Grill is Back on the Market! After enjoying this painting for 27 years, the owner, a private collector who wishes to remain anonymous, has decided to sell it. Due to a change in decor it no longer fits in his home. Since I am in contact with the largest number of fans of my work, I am pleased to announce that the owner has entrusted me to be his agent in the sale. I’m excited about this because it’s a special painting and, yes, I will earn a commission.

At 30 x 50 this is one of the largest oil paintings I have ever done.

I took the reference photos for the painting in 1986 or ‘87 while on a business trip to California. This was my first trip back to California since I had lived there as a child in 1960 - ‘63. Los Angeles had changed since the ‘60s but there were still many vestiges of my childhood era to be found in L.A., including the ever present yellow-gray smog which diffuses the Hollywood Hills in the background.

I never went out of my way to paint famous places. In fact, I have tried to avoid painting certain places that have become roadside America clichés. I wasn’t sure that this was the same Sunset Grill in the Don Henley song. I just painted it because it spoke to me. I was aware of the song but there were lines in the song that didn’t make sense with the reality of the image. It wasn’t until the Internet came along that I was able to discover that this is the actual place immortalized by Henley. He just took some artistic license to make a broader statement. I took some artistic license myself in including the figure behind the counter. I invented him and put him in there to add the human element and provide a focal point to the composition. In my reference photo the place is closed and devoid of life. As I learned in the article linked below, his name was Joe. This is uncanny because while I was painting him I imagined him being named Joe.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-01-02-ca-23690-story.html It is interesting to read in this L.A. Times article from 1986 that Henley was addressing the same themes that have run through my work for the last 45 years:

"It's just the disappearance of a certain way of life and of doing business and of people relating to each other on a one-to-one, personal level," he said. "It's about living in a world of corporations and franchises. The small shopkeeper in the city is being put out of business.”

“To me, Joe simply symbolizes one of the last outposts or vestiges of the mom-and-pop business operation . . . the family-owned and -operated business. And the really sad thing is that the generations of kids who were born in the past 10 or 20 years don't know the difference. People accept Wendy's."

Don Henley, 1986. Well said, Don.

Like so many of my subjects, this place is no longer there. It was torn down years ago and replaced by a much glitzier establishment of the same name. The original Sunset Grill is a part of vanished America.

This painting can be viewed by appointment. Serious inquires only please.