Jose Hernandez Diaz

The Venice Beach Portrait Painter

I paint exclusively in black-and-white. I pay homage to the past. I like to paint portraits of deceased iconic artists like Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, and Giotto di Bondone. I sell my portraits on the Venice Boardwalk to tourists and locals alike. My customers are often foreigners and folks from landlocked states looking for an escape from the routine of their suburban lives. These tourists are looking to drop a little cash on bohemian souvenirs.
          There is a special connection between art, ocean mist and people-watching. Call it inspiration or living off your mind. I truly live for these southern California weekends on the boardwalk. Don’t think I’ll ever leave. Except maybe to Acapulco, Mexico. Maybe in the next life.
 
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Moon, Wind, Eternity

A man in a “Baudelaire for President” shirt walked in the city at midnight. He wasn’t drunk on absinthe, more like a late black coffee which had him over-stimulated. He saw the moon in the distance, alone like a scholarly monk. He saw the stars bright in the night sky: owl eyes. The man in a “Baudelaire for President” shirt had given up cigarettes when he turned thirty-five, but he couldn’t give up caffeine. He sat on a graffitied park bench and wrote a poem. It was about the miracle of the night sky and the chill of the wind. He titled it, “Moon, Wind, Eternity.” When he got home from his midnight stroll, he edited the poem. He submitted it to a few of his favourite literary magazines before drifting away to the ether of sleep.

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New Year’s Resolution
 
A man jumped into a lake. It was the beginning of the new year. He’d never been up close to a lake before. He’d driven by Pyramid Lake on the way to Los Angeles or the Bay Area but never took a dip. He didn’t get out much. The man knew how to swim from childhood lessons, but not formal ones. Just testing it out: sink or swim. His family was kind of crazy, but they were also tough. He couldn’t take that away from them. Tough as Canelo or any working-class boxer, really. As he floated in the lake, it occurred to him that his new year’s resolution was to swim more: lakes, ocean, the gym. He would even take up surfing lessons. Start from the beginning, humble himself, crawling, until he could surf with ease. For now, he rested and thought about the Rose Parade earlier that morning. What a gorgeous concept, he thought, flowers on parade.
 
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Confessions of a Failed Abstract-Expressionist Painter
 
I’m a painter who often fears a lack of money in life. I’m okay, for now, but will I ever own a house? Perhaps I can venture out to teach art soon? Perhaps I’ll find another occupation? There is also the fear of lack of fame. Mostly ego, of course, but every artist wants to be appreciated, especially while we’re still alive, right? I guess I’m already unknown, and it’s not the end of the world. Perhaps I can tough it out as a mere pedestrian in this vast, indifferent world. The next case scenario is lack of love. Certainly, the worst of the scenarios. Perhaps a result of lack of money or lack of fame. Lack of love cuts deepest, like a samurai sword to the gut. A life lived in isolation, like a drifting island, floating at sea, at midnight.
 
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The Garden of Lilacs
 
A man in a Deftones shirt walked in a garden of lilacs. He looked up at the sky; rain was on the way. Baptism? When he was a child, he was baptized along with his twin brother. His twin brother was named after pointing randomly to a page in the Bible. He was also named this way. Later, he left the church to watch football and basketball on Sunday mornings. When he was a teenager, the man in a Deftones shirt used to surf the concrete on a longboard, headphones, sunglasses and all. Now, the man in a Deftones shirt, walking in a field of lilacs, is a professional photographer. His favourite photos are of his Abuelo, who worked the fields in Mexico and the U.S. as a Bracero. The man in a Deftones shirt shared the photos of his Abuelo and family in Mexico as part of a canvas exhibition on collage style painting. The name of the exhibition: Arguments, Baptisms and Other Epiphanies.

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Jose Hernandez Diaz (he, him, his) is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the forthcoming, The Lighthouse Tattoo (Acre Books, 2026). He has taught creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, and at the University of Tennessee where he was the Poet in Residence.