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.
