He goes by the name Keni Arts and he’s a whiz with watercolor.
For years now, Keni has painted his longtime home of Altadena, finding beauty in the mundane, like the local post office or hardware store.
“Altadena Hardware, some of the greatest people in the world,” he said.
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These days, following the Eaton Fire, much of his favorite town is unrecognizable, and yet, he continues to paint what he sees — the charred remains of so many of his favorite local haunts.
“Yeah, it’s been a tough situation, you know, especially for so many people who have lived here for so long,” Keni said. “This is the sort of place where you could walk down the street and run into two or three neighbors that I knew. And, so that's not happening right now.”
Keni has been going through his old work, finding a spot and returning to paint what it looks like today. He then posts his heartbreakingly works of art side by side with the originals, a difficult dichotomy to accept, but one that is helping him heal.
“You know, people deal with tragedy in different ways,” Keni explained. “This is one of the ways I deal with mine.”
For Keni, life is imitating his art. His home was also lost in the fire.
“Lost my home and all of my artwork except a few small paintings,” he said. “I lost my studio at my home. But this right here is my studio.”
While Keni and his wife stay with their daughter out of town, he calls Altadena “the best little city in the world.”
While it may take years for him to return permanently, he goes out of his way to visit and to paint, to remember the past and look ahead to the future.
“They call it the silver lining in the clouds or something,” he said. “And that's what we try to do. We look for that.”
