The character and quality of our most awesome City of Encinitas is in large part defined and molded by the talented and creative people that have resided here over the generations. One such person of note is Encinitas’s very own, artist Kevin Anderson. 

Kevin’s art is expressed as public art in the form of outdoor and indoor murals, which can be found all over Encinitas, San Diego and beyond, and Kevin is one of Encinitas’s most prolific painters, who can be frequently spotted outdoors along the coast between Del Mar and Encinitas painting the coastal scenes in his ‘plein air’ style. 

Kevin is not a transplant that arrived here later in life, that happens to be a great artist, but is an artist who's very inner artist being was a creation born of his own experience of having been raised in the special collective community us old-timers fondly called ‘San Dieguito.’ 

Kevin will tell you that, "As a kid, I grew up in Solana Beach, and then later in Cardiff. It was a great life. Went to the beach a lot in the summer. We lived the 'Beach Blanket Bingo' life in Solana Beach. Sunburned all day and partied all night for years and years, until I was older and out of high school." 

"My high school experience in the early seventies, while I wasn't into academics, it was rich in culture and art. The teachers there were the ones that pretty much paved the way for me to become an artist." 

"There were a couple of teachers, in particular, Marianne Hanafin and Marilyn Delise, that were instrumental in opening my eyes to wanting to paint and draw, and kind of convinced me that that’s what I wanted to do with my life.” 

“Hanafan would take a student, put them in front of her, and sketch them and made it look just like them. When I saw her do that, I go, “I want to know how to do that!”

“And then Mrs. Delise took a glass, it was actually a glass ashtray, put it on a table, with the light shining through the transparency, and did a color chalk drawing of it, that just blew my mind. I go, “I need to know how to do that!”

“San Dieguito High School was just a great place to go. They had an open campus, so if I wanted to get away for a day, I could go surfing. It wasn’t so structured that it took the life out of a person. Actually, it was open enough to let you flourish, and do what you wanted to do. Mainly, it was the art that turned me on. From there I went to Palomar College, and then on to Long Beach State University, because of those teachers.”

"But I never left Encinitas. I always lived in Cardiff, while I was going to college. I would commute. On Mondays, I would go to Long Beach, stay up there, oftentimes sleeping in my truck, and stay there all week and come back on Fridays to Cardiff."

“Living around here, it’s kind of like living a pretty good dream. I keep mind focused on what’s still here, the underlying beauty, regardless of the growth and the development. It has a certain soul and feeling. As far as painting the area, it’s unlimited what you can paint.”

“I have spent a whole year painting from Swamis to Seaside, painting around sixty pictures and I never left those confines or ran out of new views or ideas to paint.