Capturing the past

If Bill Anderson ever picks an official theme song for his Sunset Beach art gallery, he might do well with the Pretenders’ “My City Was Gone.”

In that 1980s classic, singer Chrissie Hynde laments returning to her home state of Ohio and finding the places she remembered nearly unrecognizable: the city “reduced to parking spaces,” the countryside “paved down the middle.” Anderson, a Huntington Beach resident, has experienced the same jolt more than once — and his brush is his tool for preserving bygone times.

“When we opened the gallery — and it’s been almost 20 years ago now — I had kind of missed the boat in a couple places like my hometown in Minnesota,” he said Tuesday in the front room of the Anderson Art Gallery, surrounded by vibrant watercolors. “I didn’t paint there out on location very much when I was, like, in high school and college. I did a few things, not many. And then we moved away to Long Beach, back in 1963 — my first teaching job — and a few years later, went back to my hometown and it had changed so much. And I thought, ‘Oh, I wish I had painted all those interesting places.’

“Then Huntington Beach, I painted some of the oil wells and that kind of thing, but at that time, I was going so much to the San Pedro area and painting the fishing boats and all that kind of thing, and I kind of missed the boat again. So when we opened the gallery, I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna paint Sunset Beach before it changes.’”

As the images on display in the gallery at 16812 Pacific Coast Hwy. demonstrate, Anderson painted Sunset Beach before it changed — and also when it changed, and after it changed. Giving a commentary on the street scenes, the artist noted which businesses still existed and which had gone under. One piece, titled “Layers,” shows an old-fashioned cottage next door to modern developments.

In short, Anderson has served as a documentarian for Sunset Beach since his gallery opened in 1995. This summer, he’s celebrating 19 years of service in two ways: with his book “Sunset Beach, Through the Eyes of Artist Bill Anderson,” a self-published compilation of 258 images, and with a gallery show featuring some of the included works.

If any stretch of Orange County could qualify as a small town, it may be Sunset Beach, even though the neighborhood officially became part of Huntington Beach in 2011. The roughly 1,200 residents pick up their mail at the post office and hold festivities in a former fire station. A bulletin board outside the post office advertises upcoming events.

In that context, Anderson serves as an artist-in-residence for the town, according to Mike Van Voorhis, president of the Sunset Beach Community Assn.

“I go there [to the gallery] and I’ll spend two hours there sometimes, just looking at paintings and talking to Bill,” Van Voorhis said. “He just kind of helps give Sunset Beach part of its soul. It’s just an integral part of our town.”

Anderson hasn’t exclusively painted Sunset Beach over the past two decades — his book, which bears the subtitle “And Views from Sunset Beach,” contains glimpses of surrounding Orange County — but its images dominate his gallery. Often, he makes a point of including surfers or beachgoers in his neighborhood scenes to emphasize the location.

Occasionally, he’ll even catch a moment in history. During the annexation controversy, when some residents went to court to keep Sunset separate from Huntington, Anderson painted a blue news van with a reporter speaking before a tripod on the beach.

Otherwise, the changes captured in Anderson’s paintings may be subtle ones, best realized by tracking the cues in a 19-year body of work. And if some things stay the same over two decades, that’s part of the story too.

“If I’m going to paint a car, I’m going to find an old car to paint, because it’s got character,” Anderson said. “And the same thing goes with architecture. The more modern it is, it may be more comfortable to live in. It may feel very updated, but there’s something about a little cottage on the beach that was built maybe around the turn of the century. And I don’t mean 1999 to 2000.”

If You Go

What: “Paintings of Sunset Beach by Bill Anderson, 1995-2014”

Where: Anderson Art Gallery, 16812 Pacific Coast Hwy., Sunset Beach

When: 1 to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 1 to 6 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 3

Cost: Free

Information: (562) 592-4393 or https://www.billandersonartgallery.com