In the early part of the pandemic, I took to walking my neighborhood with an almost obsessive regularity. Working from home in a small office-less house made me need exercise and air, and I wasn’t interested in being inside a gym, so walking was the easiest option. I started paying more attention to the houses and the architecture than I ever had before, so when I happened to see a painting by the famed photorealist artist Robert Bechtle, I immediately knew I had seen that exact view. In fact, I could almost see it from my own front porch.
I knew Bechtle had painted California, but I never connected him with Alameda specifically. His paintings were of a dull suburban America — which is apparently precisely where I had chosen to live, even though this suburb is a short ferry ride from San Francisco and is more urb than suburb these days.
My walking obsession became a Bechtle obsession. If he painted one Alameda scene, how many more could I find? The answer, as you’ll read in this article I wrote for SFGATE, was quite a lot. I also learned that photorealism isn’t always as real as it seems.
Bechtle’s Alameda Gran Torino (1974) meets real life in 2021: Alameda Ford Fusion Hybrid
Andy Murdock 