LAGUNA BEACH : ‘Paint-In’ Is Protest of Toll Road

Holding a paintbrush in one hand and a palette in the other, artist Michael Hallinan blocked out the nearby sounds of cars whizzing along Laguna Canyon Road on Friday and skillfully arranged and mixed his oil paints.

He then began to apply the paint to a sketch of two barren sycamore trees that stand in the Sycamore Hills portion of Laguna Canyon.

“The painting doesn’t look like much now, but it’s on its way,” said Hallinan, who was wearing a cap, blue jeans and a sweat shirt to work comfortably under threatening skies and in a cool afternoon breeze.

Hallinan, 47, was one of the more than one dozen local artists who participated in a three-hour “paint-in” sponsored by the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group.

The event was organized to protest the proposed San Joaquin Hills tollway, which would cut through the coastal hills for 15 miles to link Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano with the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach.

The $778-million project has been slowed by by legal and regulatory problems since it was first proposed in 1972. On Feb. 27, the Orange County Planning Commission will consider issuing a permit that would allow grading for the roadway.

“We just want people to come out and look at the canyon and understand that it’s not going to be this way that much longer if the tollway is built,” said Michael Phillips, executive director of the conservancy. “This is the year that they are going to start grading, and we want people to see the scene of the crime.”

Phillips said it was not difficult to persuade many of the city’s more prominent artists to participate in the event.

“The things Laguna is known for are its beautiful environment and its artistic background,” Phillips said. “It’s just a natural linkage, and we share many of the same reasons for wanting to see the canyon preserved.”

Standing a few yards from Laguna Canyon Road, artist Anne England, 53, worked passionately throughout the morning on a watercolor painting of the canyon--a stretch of land she is passionate about saving.

“Anytime they call on us artists to do something like today’s event, we do it,” England said. “We leave our galleries, our homes or our studios to promote causes that are just. And this is just. The idea of this road has me very disturbed because this canyon is filled with wildlife.”

Many other artists also spoke emotionally against the proposed tollway.

“This beautiful area and where we are standing right now is where the toll road will go,” said artist Earlene Moses, who was wearing a “Boycott Toll Roads” bumper sticker across her bright pink painting outfit.

“This kind of thing has got to stop someplace,” Moses said. “This is our last frontier. It’s exciting to drive down this canyon. Our children will never be able to drive down this road the same way we are. People don’t realize how beautiful something is until it’s gone.”

The paintings will be unveiled to the public at 10 a.m. Feb. 29 during Toll Road Awareness Day, which is being organized by the conservancy.

Some of the paintings will be for sale, with a portion of the proceeds going toward a legal fund being used to challenge construction of the tollway, Phillips said.