PAVEL GAZUR
Big Sur in Paint and Words
California Coastal Painter & Author
I paint the rugged coast of Big Sur and the California shoreline in oil. I also write historical novels rooted in the same cliffs, fog, water, roads, coves, and stories that have shaped my paintings for years.
This site is where the work comes together: Big Sur paintings, historical novels, coastal travel, forgotten history, and the personal story behind the art.
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 setting for one of the great forgotten disasters and the story I built around it.
The Light at Point Sur: A Historical Novel
A historical novel inspired by the 1935 crash of the USS Macon off Point Sur. Love, memory, and the California coast meet in a story shaped by Big Sur and one of its remarkable forgotten histories.
Books
Two Novels of Big Sur
Two historical novels rooted in Big Sur, Point Sur, Partington Cove, and the Monterey coast, written by the same hand that paints it.
Partington Cove: A Novel of Big Sur
Big Sur, 1928. Ingrid Halvorsen finds jade on the shore below her family's land. What begins as a private act becomes a family history reaching from Jade Cove and Partington Cove to Monterey, inheritance, and the cost of hidden truth.
BOOKSTORES & GIFT SHOPS
Both paperbacks are available through Ingram and on Amazon. Any bookstore can order them by ISBN. For signed copies, events and wholesale. SELECTED WORK
The Big Sur Collection
The same coast that runs through the book: Point Sur, Garrapata, Kirk Creek, Plaskett Creek, Pfeiffer Beach.
Kirk Creek, Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Garrapata, Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Plaskett Creek, Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Prewitt Creek, Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Big Sur, California | Painting by Pavel Gazur
Why I paint, why I wrote the novels.
I paint the California coast on location. I have to stand in front of it, see it, feel the wind and the cold, hear the waves crash against the rocks, before I can paint it. Big Sur is the coast that keeps pulling me back: the cliffs, the fog, the waves below the bluffs, and the light that never holds still. I have returned to this coast with an easel for years.
Out there with the easel, I started learning what had happened on this coast. In 1935 the USS Macon went down a few miles off Point Sur, and almost no one remembers it. That became The Light at Point Sur: A Historical Novel. Further south, the coves at Partington and Jade had their own history, and that became Partington Cove: A Novel of Big Sur.
My wife Siobhan and I were married at Garrapata Beach. We brought our daughter, Vendela, here on trips. Both of them listened to these stories while I wrote them, argued about the endings with me, and helped me find the ones that felt true.
The paintings and the novels were both shaped by Big Sur, one of California’s great treasures, and most beautiful coasts.