Even though our family has been vacationing in the Northern California coastal town of Mendocino since 1974, it hadn’t occurred to me to join the myriad of other coastal painters and use it as a subject reference until recently. I had stereotyped myself as a mountain painter. Lately I have even strayed so far as to put creatures in the landscape: fish, birds, deer, and with “Knee Deep”, even humans. The people are my grandchildren tentatively testing the foam to see if they have the courage to actually swim in the frigid north coast waters.