‘Gloom’ and doom: Artist markets mural
PALISADES PARK — Running low on cash and facing the possibility of being homeless for the first time in his life, Bronx-based muralist Arnie Charnick was walking here three years ago when he glimpsed something that inspired him to paint.
“I was thinking of that old saying that you are only a finger snap away from being homeless,” said the 59-year-old Charnick. “That was me. No work was coming in. It had just dried up and I was forced to rent out my apartment in New York and move out here to stay with a friend.
“Here I was in Santa Monica, hanging out in Palisades Park, and I began to feel such an affinity with those people who were homeless.”
Charnick was struck by the dichotomy that lay before him. The beauty of the ocean view and the surrounding opulence clashed with the It was then that Charnick felt compelled to paint the mural “Gloom With a View,” a brightly-colored, art-deco inspired work that showcases several homeless people Charnick captured with his camera while walking through the park.Behind them are images many Santa Monicans will recognize, including the famous Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier and the statue of Saint Monica.
Charnick worked for about six weeks in a friend’s spare bedroom painting the mural, and just when he finished, he was offered a job in New York and returned home, leaving the mural in his daughter’s garage in Newport Beach. There it sat until this winter, when Charnick returned with the hopes of selling the mural and using the money to help agencies providing services to the homeless.
“I don’t want it to be bought and then just sit in someone’s home,” Charnick said. “I want it to be a public piece, and my intention is to have someone sponsor it and then use that money for a homeless organization that could make prints and then sell them.”
Charnick () has been making the rounds locally, trying to garner interest in his work, which he described as a cross between Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of the Last Supper and a Depression-era painting commissioned by the government.
So far, he’s generated only mild interest and has had a hard time getting permission from City Hall to showcase the mural, Charnick said.
“I was here for only about three months, painted this mural, and then as soon as I finished I got work again,” Charnick said. “That tells me that I must have painted this for a reason. That’s what’s driving me now.
“This is my way of helping the homeless, who have truly inspired me.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 2, 2007. Read the original PDF.