December Morning, Rodeo

There is a particular quality of light at Rodeo Beach on a clear morning — the way the sky goes almost impossibly blue, the way the spray off the Pacific catches it and throws it back at you, the way the dark basalt and pale sandstone cliffs seem to hold centuries of weather in every striated layer. Alexandra Bailliere has painted here many times, and you can feel that accumulated knowledge in every brushstroke: the assurance of someone who knows this place, who has watched it change with the season and the tide. The beach stretches forward into the picture, sandy and wide, marked lightly by footprints that suggest a recent presence — perhaps the painter's own. Beyond, the sea moves in its restless, perpetual way, white foam breaking against the base of the headland. The cliffs rise in warm terracotta and cool grey, topped by a sweep of vivid green hill under an open sky. There is nothing extraneous here. Everything that needs to be said is said. Bailliere has spoken of her interest in the overlooked and the incongruous — the unexpected beauty in ordinary coastal places. This painting is a quiet argument that Rodeo Beach, tucked inside the Golden Gate National Recreation Area just minutes from the city, is one of the great overlooked landscapes of the Bay Area. She makes the case without fanfare, simply by looking with full attention and painting what she sees.