Just makin up poems in my head as I climb toward Mount Tamalpais.
See up there, as beautiful a mountain as you’ll see anywhere in the world,
a beautiful shape to it, I really love Tamalpais. —The character Japhy in The Dharma Bums (1958), by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac and his hiking pal and fellow beat poet Gary Snyder, on whom the character Japhy was based, weren’t alone. Of all the land features that frame San Francisco Bay, none is more loved than Mt. Tamalpais. By the second world war, the mountain was already covered with trails well-used by weekending Bay Area residents. To the Miwok people, it was sacred.
So it’s appropriate that a nice big, 18″ x 36″ view of the sleeping lady (see below) is a centerpiece of Beloved California IX, our current show (running through the 28th). In “Majestic Mt. Tam” by Richard Lindenberg, the mountain, lit by the setting sun, reflects off a glassy creek in the foreground. We set the oil on canvas in a carved walnut mortise and tenon frame with a coppery bronze slip. Trevor Davis made it.
Richard Lindenberg
“Majestic Mt. Tam”
Oil on canvas, 18″ x 36″. $5,000 framed.
BUY
She was a beautiful young Miwok maiden in love with an Indian prince. When he abandoned her, she walked to the top of the mountain nearby and died of heartbreak. As she sobbed, the mountain heard her intense sorrow and took pity. When she finally died, the mountain was so moved it changed its form, taking on the supine shape of her body and becoming the Sleeping Lady, our dear Mt. Tamalpais.