Muralist adds color, local pride to Solana Beach Post Office

When local artist Kevin Anderson was commissioned to paint murals inside the Solana Beach Post Office he worried at first that it might get boring, being cooped up inside all day. The opposite turned out to be true.
“It’s one of the best times I’ve ever had painting,” said Anderson, a Solana Beach native. “All day long people come up and talk to me.”
After months of work above the mailboxes, people he’s met greet him by name as he’s filled the blank spaces with Solana Beach scenes, the bluffs of Fletcher Cove, the downtown plaza with its ocean backdrop, Eden Gardens, and the natural beauty of Annie’s Canyon and the lagoon.
He’s made new friends and been re-acquainted with old friends, like a former co-worker from the early 1970s when he worked at the then-Whispering Palms Golf Course in high school. Another person he hadn’t seen since they were both eighth graders at Earl Warren.
“I’m going to miss it,” said Anderson of the social hub that is the post office. Anderson is just putting the finishing touches on the murals, with a formal ribbon-cutting celebration lined up for Saturday, April 26 from 3 to 5 p.m.
Last week he was adding the very last piece, a sunset that will greet visitors right when they walk in the door. He stood on a step ladder to reach the narrow wall, dabbing on bits of yellow and white paint, “Most of the time I feel like I’m a kid back in grade school, playing with colors again,” he said in between brushstrokes.
The Solana Beach Post Office was built in 1965 and while it has some very unique historical elements, in its later years it had started to look a little plain and drab. The Solana Beach Civic & Historical Society commissioned the murals after the faded interior got a fresh coat of paint in a light blue hue.
“For more than 70 years, our organization’s mission has been to support civic education and the beautification of our community,” said Solana Beach Historical Society President Jojo Dodson Bogard in a news release. “The freshly painted walls provided a canvas for furthering those goals. And after Postmaster Richard Zamora agreed to partner on the project, Kevin was the obvious artist for the job.”
Now an Encinitas resident, Anderson grew up just down the street in Solana Beach, his father a Del Mar firefighter. When he was around 10 or 11, he used to come to the post office all the time to add to his stamp collection. “The postmaster used to set aside some of the best stamps for me,” he recalled. “Here I am back here in my 60s, painting the post office.”
Nearly all the Solana Beach scenes he could paint by heart, each one carrying a treasured memory.
Of Fletcher Cove: “I grew up surfing there, what we used to call Pillbox.”
Of the view of the plaza, he points to a tree by the visitor’s center below the Solana Beach sign. “I lived off Sierra and a lot of kids surfed before school. We would go out surfing before school at Skyline or Earl Warren and run and stash our boards behind the tree and then stand there with sopping wet shirts and pants waiting for the bus.”
In one alcove of post office boxes, there is a collection of three murals, including one of the train station surrounded by eye-catching purple sea lavender and poppies and palm trees. On another wall is an “idealized local reef” featuring the bright orange Garibaldi fish, what Anderson sees when he dives under the water while surfing Tabletop (Tide Beach Park).
“I’ve painted this view at least 10 times or more,” he said of one mural’s depiction of the perfect “s” curve of the 101 against the wide open beach view toward Cardiff. The same view can be spotted on one of the four large murals he painted on the walls of the Gateway Business Center building at the northwest corner of I-5 and Lomas Santa Fe Drive.
Anderson first caught the bug to become an artist when he was a senior at San Dieguito Academy. He went to Palomar College for two years before transferring to Long Beach State to earn his art degree. He never moved up there as he couldn’t bear to leave his hometown—for four years he went up from Cardiff on Mondays and stayed in a camper, driving back home on Fridays.
He learned to paint big as part of a mural painting group, getting his start by doing murals in Las Vegas casinos. His large-scale murals have included pieces at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado and a “colossal” 72-foot-long, 270-degree mural in a pedestrian tunnel in the Civita community in Mission Valley.
Several Anderson originals can be spotted beautifying buildings in Encinitas and Solana Beach, almost always ocean scenes.
“Our natural coastline is still what I love to paint. I’m very fortunate that I didn’t have to go anywhere to find my passion, it’s right there,” said Anderson. What some call plein air painting, he calls “on location” painting and you can often find him working outdoors at spots like Torrey Pines. He is also always snapping photos for inspiration, coming to jobs like the post office with a stack of photos to work from. “What drives me most is a passion for painting, I think that’s never going away,” he said, describing how he sometimes has butterflies the night before painting one of his projects because he just can’t wait to get out there.
Anderson has been working on the post office project for the last six months, taking September off to spend a month in Hawaii where he was inspired by all the natural beauty. The Historical Society didn’t any pressure him to meet a set timeline and he never felt rushed.
“I stretched it out and worked on it continually in order to do the best job and I think it is some of my finest work,” he said.
While portraits of Solana Beach spaces like Annie’s Canyon where he used to play as a kid came more easily and naturally, with others he took a different approach. For his tribute to La Colonia de Eden Gardens, he researched the community’s history and attended events such as the Dia de Los Muertos celebration where he was wowed by the displays of family ofrendas honoring the memory of loved ones. His mural features the vibrant colors of sugar skulls, marigolds and Mexican dancers along with iconic La Colonia scenes such as the wrought iron archway, the Heritage Museum with its flowering trellis, St. Leo’s Church—there’s even a skateboarder getting air at the skate park.
Working in the post office for his last week putting on the finishing brushstrokes, Anderson’s work was punctuated by hellos and fist bumps, inquiries and compliments.
Of his many local connections and visitors over the last months, one of his favorites was his 90-year-old dad, who drove in all the way from Julian just to see his latest works. Afterward, they grabbed lunch at Tony’s Jacal.
“It’s fabulous, it used to be so dreary in here,” remarked AnaMarie Grace, a 42-year resident of Solana Beach as she picked up her mail and admired the murals. She said what makes Kevin’s work so special is knowing that he grew up in Solana Beach–the scenes he has painted stoke a lot of local pride.
“He painted something that fits with who we are as a city,” she said.