Keni “Arts” Davis has depicted many of Altadena’s changes with a paintbrush.
The retired 75-year-old Hollywood set painter who worked on movies like “Ocean’s Eleven” and TV shows like “Star Trek” has been painting watercolor cityscapes of Altadena for the past 40 years, since he moved to the area as a much younger man. He watched as liquor stores on Lincoln Avenue were replaced by coffee shops, restaurants and boutiques. Through all the change, he painted.
None of those changes were as stark as those wrought by the Eaton fire in January, which ravaged the neighborhood, destroying Davis’ home, his art studio and so many of the locations he had painted over the years.
With his easel and paint kit in tow, Davis is returning to locations he painted in the past, like a refugee returning home after a war to a charred and moonlike landscape, artistically surveying the skeletal remains of long-familiar landmarks, hoping to salvage some beauty and meaning through his brush.
“Even though it’s devastation now that I’m capturing, it’s still something that I love to do,” said Davis as he began a sketch of Everest Burgers on Friday at the corner of Lake Avenue and East Mendocino Street. He’d painted the popular burger joint before the fires.
In a situation that might reasonably drive many into a fog of depression, Davis is stunningly optimistic. His house of 38 years was reduced to ash after he and his wife escaped in the late hours of the first night of the Eaton fire. His studio, where he kept his art, as well as some of the paintings made by his daughter, Kenturah Davis, also burned.
Davis plans to rebuild his home and even as he re-creates the destruction on paper, painting it stroke by stroke, he smiles and jokes. He cites Isaiah 61:3 for his positivity: He will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair.
The series of paintings Davis is working on is called “Beauty From Ashes.” He hopes to create an exhibition of his post-fire artwork at some point. The paintings are not for sale.
Before he moved to Altadena, Davis lived in Pasadena. He began painting en plein air — outside — when he was a child and one of his art teachers took him and other students out of class to paint. He fell in love with the style. He painted Pasadena starting in the 1970s and then Altadena when he moved there in the 1980s. He thought for a while that he wanted to be an architect, which is part of why he loved painting buildings, but he realized he preferred painting buildings to designing them.
Part of what Davis loves about working outside is the interactions he can have with strangers as he works. Usually reserved, Davis said he opens up while he’s painting. Once, painting in Hollywood, Davis offered money to a homeless man if the man could perform something for him. To his shock, Davis said, the man began to sing beautifully and told Davis that he had been a Broadway singer in New York before moving to Los Angeles to work in the film industry, but became homeless after his dreams fell through.
As Davis painted Friday, a woman named Cindy approached him and told him how much his paintings meant to her and the community. They both vowed not to leave Altadena.
The interaction reminded Davis of what he loves about the neighborhood: the friendly neighbors, the casual interactions, the close-knit nature of the community.
One thing he’s realized is how the fire sapped color from the landscape. In the past, Davis’ paintings were filled with reds and greens, lively colors that captured the landscape and the buildings within it. Now it’s mostly muted browns and grays.
Davis has already returned to his favorite spots in Altadena to paint their remains: the post office, the hardware store. On Jan. 9, as the Eaton fire still blazed, Davis returned to his own home to capture in watercolors the scraggly trees, the overturned plants, the still-standing chimneys.
As he painted what was left of Everest Burgers, Lake Avenue, Altadena’s commercial thoroughfare, bustled with toiling emergency workers. A Red Cross disaster relief truck was parked in the Grocery Outlet parking lot. Construction workers were digging up pipes in the street. National Guard soldiers stood idly by in their camouflage trucks.
And a painter stood on the corner across from a burned down burger joint with a paintbrush, quietly documenting it all.
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