Tuesday Artist Date: Quiet time in Point Richmond

Today’s artist date followed right on the heels of my first watercolor class at the RAC. I enjoyed it, but three hours of painting, all of it spent with strangers, exhausted me. So after class, I took my PB&J (with homemade plum jam from my mom) to cozy Point Richmond for a very calm slice of me time. I parked the car, bought some macaroni salad (one of my comfort foods) from a deli, and seated myself on a bench under a big tree: to eat, drink, be quiet, and just observe and relax. No books, no sketching or journaling, just my lunch and the placid midday activities of a tiny city center in a smallish town.

Downtown Point Richmond is a funny place. It’s a quick drive from Richmond proper, which according to some statistics is a worse hub of violent crime than its more notorious neighbor, Oakland. It’s surrounded by industrial areas and refineries, and train tracks run right through it. Yet the historical buildings and proximity to the shoreline make it resemble (if only superficially) one of my favorite California towns, Mendocino. Since I have to drive through Richmond to get to the Point, whenever I arrive, it feels as if I’ve been dropped into a parallel universe, like the fictional town in Pleasantville or the manufactured city in The Truman Show. In fact, it’s the perfect place for a peaceful solo lunch after I’ve had enough of people for a while!

Even better than the quiet town are the trails and parks that surround it. Just outside the Point, there’s a little beach that offers stunning views of the bay and the nearby Richmond-San Rafael bridge. We went there at night once, and the deep dark of the water and the mountains beyond, sprinkled with the lights of the city and the bridge, rendered me speechless.

Today I discovered Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline, just next to this beach. Geese and seagulls hung out on the grass next to a shimmering lagoon, beyond which the bay and the bridge were both visible. I watched the geese preen themselves for a while, then tramped around the squishy grass and enjoyed the sun and all those greens and blues of the land, sea, and sky. So many of my artist dates involve hours of striding around a city. To just be alone outside for an hour made a pleasant change.