Beneath the Cypress

The waves crashed against the shore with a kind of ancient ferocity, white caps folding into the sand beneath a sky washed in pale coastal blue. The afternoon sun warmed the beach while low clouds drifted through the cypress canopy above, their shadows moving slowly across the cliffs like passing brushstrokes. A yellow lab bounded through the surf, chasing foam and gull cries as the tide breathed in and out along Carmel Beach. Sand pressed softly between my toes as I began the climb toward Tenth Avenue, the transition from warm shoreline to weathered wooden stairs and rugged dirt path arriving like a change in rhythm.

Above me, the cypress branches swayed in the wind, sculptural and wild against the sky. Ice plant spilled over old stone retaining walls in thick green ribbons dotted with bursts of orange poppies glowing like embers in the afternoon light. My bare feet met the familiar shock of cool earth and scattered gravel as the scent of salt air and sun-warmed bark settled around me.

Then, beneath the shelter of an enormous cypress tree, stood an easel.

Cradled within the trunk’s twisting embrace, it felt less placed there and more grown from the landscape itself. A wide straw hat and reflective glasses immediately gave her away. Lilli Anne Price.

A friend, painter, and member of the historic Carmel Art Association, Lilli Anne has become part of the living artistic lineage that continues to define Carmel-by-the-Sea. Founded in 1927 by artists including Armin Hansen, the association remains one of the oldest artist cooperatives in the country, preserving the village’s long-standing devotion to plein air painting, craftsmanship, and artistic community. Here, art is not confined to gallery walls. It breathes outdoors among the cypress trees, cliffs, and shifting Pacific light.

Her presence felt especially fitting as the Carmel Art Festival officially begins this week.

Founded in 1993, the Carmel Art Festival has evolved into one of the most prestigious plein air events in the country, drawing collectors and celebrated artists from around the world to the Monterey Peninsula. For three days, Carmel transforms into an open-air studio. Easels appear along beaches, tucked into forest trails, balanced above rocky cliffs, and scattered throughout the village itself as artists race to capture the fleeting poetry of the landscape before the light disappears.

Artists received their canvases earlier that day and dispersed throughout Carmel and beyond, from Point Lobos to Big Sur. Painters like Joaquin Turner and Lilli Anne Price now spend these days immersed in the elements, creating works that will soon line Devendorf Park during the festival’s juried exhibitions, auctions, demonstrations, and celebrations.

“I thought that was you walking along the beach,” Lilli Anne laughed, gesturing toward a towering Sprinter van parked nearby. She had just returned from Hurricane Point in Big Sur.

“Too windy,” she grinned, adjusting her canvas against the breeze.

Then came the moment everything shifted.

She revealed a thick pencil and, almost instantly, it touched the canvas. Swift gestural lines swept left to right in fluid succession. A sharp downward pull. A sudden arc upward. Her eyes moved continuously between Carmel Point and the horizon beyond Point Lobos, studying the landscape with near-musical precision.

Watching her work felt less like observation and more like witnessing choreography.

The pencil disappeared as quickly as it arrived, replaced by a paintbrush already loaded with color. Streaks of molten apricot and burnished persimmon spread across the horizon line, dissolving into veils of mauve ash, softened lavender smoke, and pale celadon mist. Deep passages of indigo and blue spruce emerged along the distant cypress-lined cliffs while the sea shifted between sea-glass jade, muted turquoise, and steel blue as waves folded into the shore below.

The painting seemed to appear all at once.

Lilli Anne moved in complete rhythm with the landscape around her. Brush to canvas. Canvas to easel. Easel rooted to earth beneath the cypress tree. Every element connected in quiet succession.

The poppies danced wildly in the foreground as seabirds drifted overhead. Cypress branches bent and swayed with the wind while waves thundered below against the shoreline. Then came the final gesture. Titanium white skimmed across the crests of the waves in a few deliberate strokes.

Finished.

“All done?” I asked almost involuntarily, still suspended somewhere between disbelief and admiration.

I had become completely entranced by her ability to translate an entire atmosphere onto canvas in under an hour. Not simply the landscape itself, but its feeling. Its movement. Its breath.

Time seemed to dissolve beside her easel.

Perhaps that is the true power of plein air painting. Not replication, but surrender. A willingness to stand fully present within a fleeting moment and trust your ability to carry it into permanence before the light changes.

Watching Lilli Anne paint is to watch creation unfold in real time. Beauty willed into existence through intuition, observation, and an unwavering trust in the artistic process itself.

And throughout Carmel this weekend, dozens of artists are doing the very same.

That collective act of creation is precisely what makes the Carmel Art Festival so magnetic. From May 15 through May 17, Devendorf Park becomes the center of a three-day celebration honoring Carmel’s artistic legacy through plein air competition, live music, workshops, demonstrations, auctions, and gatherings beneath the canopy of Monterey pines and coastal light.

This year’s festival expands further with formal workshops, artist demonstrations, and new opportunities for visitors to engage directly with the creative process. Friday’s opening gala will bring together artists, collectors, and the community for an evening of live music, wines from regional vineyards including Folktale Winery, and cuisine from Nora’s, Carmel’s celebrated Golden Pine Cone Award-winning restaurant. Saturday’s beloved Quick Draw competition once again transforms Mission Street into a living gallery as artists race against the clock to complete paintings across the village before presenting them for judging and auction only hours later.

Throughout the weekend, music drifts through Devendorf Park while paintings continue to arrive fresh from easels across the peninsula, still carrying traces of salt air, wind, and sunlight within their brushstrokes.

“Creativity and artistic expression are Carmel’s very special legacy,” says Festival President Hella Rothwell. It is a sentiment that feels impossible to dispute while standing beneath a cypress tree watching paint become atmosphere before your eyes.

Long before Carmel became a destination, it was a sanctuary for artists drawn here by something difficult to fully explain. The quality of the light. The movement of the sea. The way fog softens the cliffs at dusk. The sense that nature itself is constantly composing.

That spirit still lingers here.

You find it in the salt carried through the wind. In the sound of gulls overhead. In the soft grit of sand beneath bare feet. And sometimes, if you are lucky, you find it standing quietly beneath a cypress tree beside an easel, watching an artist transform the fleeting beauty of Carmel into something that will outlive the tide.

For tickets, event information, and the full festival schedule, visit The Carmel Art Festival