Manhattan Beach Palms, 2026 by Ray Patrick — original gouache painting — 2026.013.004

Subject

Palms seen from directly beneath at sunset, their trunks crossing the frame, with festoon lights and power lines strung between them and a sliver of lit cloud at the top right.

Composition

Upright, and read looking straight up. One trunk cuts the whole picture corner to corner as a hard diagonal; a second rises from the bottom edge. The wires cross them at opposing angles, so the sky is divided into irregular panels.

Palette

Cool and dusky — periwinkle, slate and lilac fill most of the sheet, with the sunset confined to small passages of apricot, coral and yellow low down and at the top corner.

Handling

Flat opaque planes, the trunks laid in two or three strokes each with no modelling. The wires and the small yellow lamps are drawn last over dry paint, in a line of unvarying weight.

Medium and support

Gouache on paper. Matte and fully opaque; the pale sky is painted around the trunks rather than over them. Unpainted margins on all four sides.

Signature

Lower right, raypatrick, in cream over the dark pole, letters touching and set at the pole's own angle.