Everyday people

Surrounded by picturesque scenes — sunny beaches to the south and west, and snow-topped mountains to the north and east — coastal Orange County is paradise for many landscape artists.

They set up easels on cliffs overlooking the ocean and watch the sun rise over the Santa Ana Mountains.

But Costa Mesa painter Michael Ward isn’t interested in any of that. He prefers to focus on subjects that are extraordinarily mundane, from one-story homes in his Halecrest neighborhood to a man watering his lawn.

“I’m drawn to those scenes more than, for instance, Main Beach in Laguna, which has been painted a million times,” Ward said. “I like to record the everyday lives we live as people rather than the spectacular sunset that you see once in a while.”

Although he paints pictures of areas all around Southern California and beyond, the artist has a fondness for Costa Mesa and is adept at capturing the relaxed ethos of the small, mixed-class suburb that grew out of farmland. Ward’s paintings have a warm, nostalgic feeling. Their charm lies in the minute details that many artists neglect while trying to capture more dramatic material: A crack in the sidewalk or the chipped, discolored bricks on the chimney of a home are painted meticulously. They have a way of drawing a viewer’s mind to past memories, he said.

“Costa Mesa is a real down-home city with no pretensions, not like Irvine or Mission Viejo where everything is planned. That’s why I like it, because it’s a little more of an ordinary city for ordinary people,” Ward said.

He reproduces his subjects with acrylic paints in such vivid detail that even from a few feet away they could be mistaken for photographs. Sharp lines are painstakingly straightened, and fonts on street signs and storefronts are exact.

“There are probably some curators who would find the details very jarring. For me it has a calm, almost relaxing feel,” said Jeffrey Frisch, the art director at John Wayne Airport, where several of Ward’s paintings are on display.

On a recent afternoon, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department volunteer patrolling the airport stopped to look at a large, panoramic picture of an intersection in Long Beach that Ward painted from a photograph he took in 1975. Old station wagons are driving by a high-rise building at a downtown intersection. It’s one of Ward’s most strikingly realistic pictures.

“He spelled expired wrong on one of the parking meters,” the volunteer joked.

As an artist who recently has been painting more himself, Frisch can attest to the patience and technical mastery necessary to achieve the effects that Ward does. And Ward had no formal training. He just started out as a curious young man walking around town with a camera in the 1970s, snapping shots of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Then, as he learned to paint, he committed the photographs to canvas in a style known as photo realism.

There is no formula for determining what would make a good picture, though. Scenes just catch Ward’s eye for one reason or another.

“Sometimes I wonder, why did I paint this?” he said.

A collection of his pictures of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach is on display in cases at the airport until Jan. 22, mostly for the appreciation of travelers as they wait for their flights. Anyone can view them, though, because they are near the baggage claim and ticketing counters, which are areas not requiring security clearance.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].