The rich and varied terrain of California, where Wayne Thiebaud has lived and worked for nearly all of his one hundred years, has inspired several series of landscapes over the artist’s long and prolific career—including fantastical cityscapes, luminous riverscapes of the Sacramento delta, towering mountains, and vivid beach scenes.

The colorful painting, Dark Beach, was started in 2003 but only finished when Thiebaud revisited the canvas earlier this year. After acquiring a condo in Laguna Beach in 2002, beach scenes became a more frequent motif for the artist, returning to a subject he had not painted since the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this unconventional composition, Thiebaud plays with a bird’s eye perspective to highlight the vivid colors of the water, surf, and sand, the textures of which he has captured with his characteristically thick use of impasto.