T

he beach is a perfectly imperfect place in Glen Maxion’s

pastels, where the differences among the people who

go there are what make them worth painting.

Beachgoers have been a recurring theme over

the past 20 years for Maxion, a San Diego artist and

former special education teacher. He conveys the quiet

happenings, as in Little Digger (at left), and the jubilant

moments, seen in School’s Out (above) with equal ease, in composi-

tions designed to place the viewer in the scene, “sometimes as actor,

sometimes as people watcher,” he says.

In Tre a s u re Hu n t (on page 44), for example, the hunched backs and

downturned heads of the beachcombers inevitably lead us to join

in the search, even though we’ll never see their discoveries. “The

painting follows a circular composition and

repetition of gestures showing people in search

of treasures,” Maxion says.

The figure has always been a focus for

the artist, who discovered—while drawing

and painting models in his studio—that the

moments between poses were what intrigued

him. “I found the models’ most interesting and

expressive ‘poses’ happened when they weren’t

posing at all,” he says. “I decided I wanted to

study the figure and portray people in natural

settings and activities, and realized that the

beach was the perfect place for that.”

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