I grew up in the outskirts of Los Angeles, where smog and sunshine mixed in equal measure. The only redeeming element to this location for me was that we lived about an hour from Disneyland. Once a year, my parents would load us kids into the back of our station wagon, and we’d set off on what felt like a pilgrimage. The most sacred part of the trip, at least to us kids, was the competition to see who could spot the Matterhorn first. For the uninitiated, the Matterhorn is Disneyland’s snow-capped mountain — a roller coaster in disguise — rising improbably from the flat California landscape. To catch a glimpse of it was proof: we were close to magic.
What made Disneyland so special was not the rides. Carnivals had rides. At least once a year, the carnival would roll into some dusty vacant lot, set up their rattling rides and neon booths, and for a week it was great fun. We rode the Ferris wheel, ate cotton candy, and felt like kings of our small world. But no one confused that carnival with Disneyland. The carnival gave you thrills; Disneyland gave you worlds.
That was the difference: theming. A carnival offered rides in a parking lot. Disneyland transformed orange groves into universes. Walking into Tomorrowland in the 1960s was like stepping into the future we thought the year 2000 might bring — sleek rockets, gleaming towers, a promise of space travel just around the corner. Frontierland pulled you backward, to the banks of the Mississippi, where paddleboats churned the water and wooden stockades smelled faintly of adventure. And then there was Pirates of the Caribbean, which didn’t just give you animatronic buccaneers. No, it escorted you into the American South at twilight, where fireflies flickered, moss hung heavy from the trees, and mint juleps cooled in tall glasses.
It wasn’t about fooling the eye so much as enchanting the imagination. The park asked you to suspend disbelief, and you gladly obliged. What amazed me most, even as a child, was knowing — really knowing — that beneath all that wonder lay a flat stretch of Southern California where oranges once grew. And yet, once you walked through those gates, you were somewhere else entirely. The magic was not in tricking you but in persuading you to feel transported.
It wasn’t about fooling the eye so much as enchanting the imagination.
That feeling lodged deep in me. Disneyland taught me that the real power of art is transformation — not just changing how a place looks, but how it feels. The strongest art doesn’t merely decorate; it alters the atmosphere of a room, the mood of the viewer, the story you believe you’re inside. That’s why, for me, a painting doesn’t just hang on a wall — it can theme a space, just as surely as Disney themed a park.
Those childhood pilgrimages left me with more than fond memories. They gave me a compass as an artist. What I love most about painting is exactly what I loved most about Disneyland: the power to take someone by the hand and, if only for a while, transport them into another world.
