PAVEL GAZUR · CALIFORNIA SEASCAPE PAINTER
In 1935, a Navy airship nearly 800 feet long fell into the sea off Big Sur.
It's known to a few historians and the people who visit the Point Sur lighthouse - almost no one else.
I've painted this coast for years. Then I wrote its story, so it isn't forgotten.
HOW THIS CAME TOGETHER
I came to Big Sur for ruggedness.
The Big Sur cliffs, the lighthouse at Point Sur, the sea hammering the rocks. I've stood out there with an easel for years, painting a coast that doesn't hold still and doesn't forgive much.
Then I learned that in 1935 the USS Macon - a Navy airship nearly 800 feet long - went down a few miles off that lighthouse. One of the biggest things ever to fly, lost in twenty minutes in a storm. And outside of Point Sur and Monterey, hardly anyone has heard of it.
It struck me that this hard, beautiful coast had been keeping a secret, and that the wreck still sitting in the deep water had a story in it. So I wrote it. The coast I'd been painting for years turned out to be the set for a disaster — and a love story I built to carry it.
COMING SOON
The Light at Point Sur
A historical novella of Big Sur — the 1935 USS Macon disaster off Point Sur, and a love story built to carry it. Available soon on Kindle, in paperback, and signed from the artist.
SELECTED WORK
The Big Sur Collection
The same coast that runs through the book — Point Sur, Garrapata, Kirk Creek, Plaskett Creek, Pfeiffer Beach.
Why I paint, why I wrote the book.
I paint the California coast on location. I have to stand in front of it — see it, feel the wind and the cold — before I can paint it.
That's where the book started. Looking out at the water where the USS Macon went down, it hit me that the coast I'd painted for years was hiding one of the great forgotten disasters — and that I could bring it back. Promote the Big Sur coast, the Point Sur lighthouse, USS Macon, all at once, by telling one true story people had never heard.
The Macon was real. The two men lost with it were real, and I honored them as the record honors them. The love story I built around it is invented.