The pre-Eaton Fire paintings of Rancho Bar came in a roundabout way.
In September of 2017, I was having coffee with my wife at Café de Leche, back when they had street side table and chair seating. I was facing north toward the mountains, paint kit already open, when a young couple strolled past. I was about to paint the unique Rancho Bar sign, the one with the wagon wheel on top.
I hastily painted it. I wasn’t happy with the result, so I stored it away and didn’t look at it again until very recently.
I did another painting at Leche in October of 2017. This time, the subject of the painting was my wife. She was seated facing Lake Ave. I painted her and included the background, which was Rancho Bar. That could be a problem if I made the painting public. People might assume that my very straight-laced, church-going wife was having drinks at the bar. You can imagine how people might talk.
I’m church-going too, but my lace isn’t as straight as her’s, so I didn’t care what people thought as long as God knew that coffee was in my cup, not Jack Daniels.
So when it came time to include Rancho Bar in the Eaton Fire before and after series of paintings, I didn’t want to show the two 2017 paintings. I decided to use them as reference to produce the one you see here.
Here’s where I slipped up. I went online and did a quick Google street view peek at Rancho. A portion to that recent photo made it into my 2017 version. I accidentally included a part of a new feature. A longtime Rancho regular would notice the inconsistency—back in 2017 there was a wooden fence around the patio, not the brick wall I painted.
Full disclosure: The ‘before’ painting you see here was done in my studio in 2025, not en plein air as with all the others.
Finally; Although I’ve never been a Rancho Bar customer, I’m truly sorry that you lost your business and your patron’s place of enjoyment in the Eaton Fire. Should you return, maybe this story will make good barroom banter.
Note: the post-Eaton Fire painting of Rancho was done during an interview I had with LA Times Studio.