Projects
2016 · KAABOO Del Mar
Del Mar, California
In partnership with PangeaSeed Foundation / SeaWalls
Old science-fiction book covers and pulp posters offered a language for this mural: dramatic perspective, heightened colour and futures in which something has gone beautifully wrong.
Created for KAABOO Del Mar, the painting brought water protection and ocean health into a surreal coastal image.
Part warning signal, part festival hallucination.
I had only a few days to paint before the festival opened.
Working with spray paint alongside my usual exterior bucket paint, I experimented with faster layering and softer atmospheric effects. The combination helped build a cinematic quality within the short production window.
The painting became bright, strange and slightly ominous—an image whose mood belonged to the festival while pointing toward pressures beyond it.
I wanted ocean protection to enter through colour, curiosity, humour and unease.
The science-fiction references gave me room to approach the subject indirectly. An unfamiliar version of a coastal world could invite someone to look again at the one they knew.
Within the festival, I hoped the painting would catch people in that moment between attraction and uncertainty: something worth approaching, with something troubling beneath its surface.
I sure am grateful for the ever-amazing Amanda Lynn for always holding it down.
Good times.
© Jason Botkin