The Collection
Release No. 01 · Big Sur, California
The place behind the first piece
McWay Falls
Curated monthly art, rooted in a place that never left me.
Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park · Pacific Coast
Photograph by E R / UnsplashWhat arrives at your door
A small ritual, carefully sent.
Release no. 01
Every shipment starts the same way: a fine art print of the piece, signed by me, slipped into a protective sleeve and wrapped in tissue paper stamped with The Painted Few.
Tucked inside is a short note — sometimes a journal prompt, sometimes a recipe, always something worth pausing on.
The print
A hand-finished 5 × 7 in. fine art print of the piece, hand-signed by the artist.
Protective sleeve
A clear poly sleeve helps keep the print protected from the studio to your collection.
Branded wrapping
Each print is wrapped in tissue paper stamped with The Painted Few.
A note inside
A printed insert card — sometimes a journal prompt, sometimes a recipe, sometimes a QR code, always something worth pausing on.
Original art entries
Digital entries into the monthly original art giveaway are included with every membership.
Vacation entries
Digital entries into the seasonal vacation giveaway are added every active month, with totals based on your membership tier.
No purchase necessary to enter either drawing. Memberships include digital entries; free mail-in entry is also available. See the Official Rules for eligibility and complete details.
Read official rulesBegin with release no. 01
Bring a new place home each month.
The place
36.158° N
121.671° W
There's a stretch of Highway 1, about forty-five minutes south of Carmel, where the road narrows and the cliffs drop straight into the Pacific — and just past a small stone bridge, an eighty-foot waterfall pours off the rock face directly onto a beach almost no one has ever stood on.
01
A rare tidefall
McWay Falls is one of only three waterfalls in the country that empty directly onto a beach — and the only one that lands on sand rather than dropping into the ocean or over open rock.
02
A cove reshaped
A landslide in 1983 built the beach below. Depending on the tide, the water still splits its path between sand and sea.
03
A view protected
The beach remains off-limits — too steep and tide-swept to reach by land — so the cove stays remarkably untouched.
The history in the view
People built a life around this exact place.
In 1924, Congressman Lathrop Brown and his wife Hélène built Waterfall House right on the point, looking out at the falls every day.
Hélène was close friends with Julia Pfeiffer Burns. When the Browns donated the land to the state in 1961, they asked that the park carry Julia's name.
The house came down in 1965, but its traces remain: foundation stones, the track of a small funicular railway, and a Pelton wheel resting nearby.
The road back
It became my reset button.
The trail to the overlook is barely half a mile round trip, slipping through a short tunnel beneath the highway before opening onto the cliffside view.
I first found this spot decades ago, back when I rode motorcycles. Monterey was a regular trip — World Superbike, MotoGP, the roar of Laguna Seca — and on the off days, there was nothing better than pointing the bike south down the coast.
No schedule, no destination, just the road and the ocean on one side. McWay Falls became the place I'd always stop. A few minutes of quiet, the sound of the water, the mind finally catching up to the body. It was less a sightseeing stop than a reset button.
That view never left me. Long after the motorcycle trips ended, McWay Falls stayed somewhere in the back of my mind — which is exactly why, when it came time to choose the very first piece for this collection, there was never really another option.
McWay Falls is the first release. It won't be the last.