The lone sea lion in my painting of the Sea Lion Caves is the one painted on the neon sign. It’s the neon sign that welcomes visitors to their destination and lures tourists from the highway to see this natural wonder. Of all of Oregon’s historic neon signs, I think the Sea Lion Caves sign from the 1950s has always been my favorite. In order to recreate the look of the late 1950s I relied heavily on the cars. I used a cardboard model of the front of the building as a backdrop to photograph a collection of cars I picked out for the painting. The composition is entirely based on the photo of the model and I used historic photographs to fill in the details.
