Wayne Thibaud, painter

“It has never ceased to thrill
and amaze me, the magic
of what happens when
you put one bit of paint
next to another.”

It seems that deaths stack up quickly at the end of the year, or maybe it's just the rush toward that end that makes us sit up and take note. In the past few weeks, the writers Anne Rice, bell hooks, and Joan Didion. Today, Bishop Desmond Tutu. And yesterday, the artist Wayne Thibaud, at age 101. I've always enjoyed Thibaud, his joyful brashness. He may be best known for his 1960s food portraits: cakes and sundaes, the contents of a deli case. But I've always been partial to his landscapes—California landscapes. Here are a few, some of which he was working on just two years ago. Creative—and appreciative of this place, his home—to the end.

Orange Grove, 1966

Yosemite Valley Ridge, 1975

Channel Farms, 1966

Estate, 1969

Winter Ridge, 2010

Hillside, 1963

Hill Street, 1987

Waterland, 1996

Delta Water, 2003

Ripley Ridge, 1977

Ponds and Streams, 2001

Mountain Roads, 2010–13

River Intersection, 2010

Road Through, 1983

Sandy Cliff, 2013/2018–19

Canyon Pass, 2019

Passing Cloud, 2014

His paints in the studio, annotated, 2013

And shortly after I posted this I learned that biologist E. O Wilson had died. That's three amazing individuals within two days, six since the 10th—or several million ordinary souls worldwide within the last three weeks. RIP, every one.