Finding Los Cabos: Fresno Boy Basks In The Mexican Sun

At 8, Frank Arnold discovered his artistic talent.

At 8, he also learned that he was adopted.

Those twin realizations immediately inspired him. Emboldened by the first, stung by the second, he vowed that henceforth he'd be his own person, independent and self-reliant. "I made a deal with myself. I'd take no money from them," he says of his quiet rebellion with his parents.

He sold newspapers. He mowed lawns. He ran a gas station. To pay his way through college, he started a sign business, which he later parlayed into an advertising and marketing agency. On weekends, he painted and sculpted.

Frank Arnold, framed by ancient wood door from Guadalajara

Today, Frank Arnold is an established abstract expressionist whose paintings can command five figures. Summers, he lives and works in Fresno in central California's San Joaquin Valley, where he's president of Ashford Advertising. From fall until spring, he's in San Jose del Cabo at the southern reaches of the Baja peninsula. In the heart of San Jose del Cabo's thriving downtown art district he's built a blocky stone-and-concrete 8,000-square-foot compound that houses studio, gallery and residence. It's in the city's old red-light district, just a block from the mission church. He shares it with his wife of five years, Carmen Capshew Arnold, and their feisty bichon, Picasso, which he walks daily through the scraggly arroyo just to the north of the complex.

At 8, Arnold and his family were living at Bakersfield in the southern San Joaquin Valley. One event of the local fair was a flower-arranging contest. He entered it, and his arrangement won a blue ribbon. "I just liked color a lot. I couldn't believe how beautiful colors could be," he recalls.

At around that time he learned rather off-handedly that he'd been adopted. "I was reading a newspaper, and an article had the word 'adoption.' I asked my mother, 'What's adoption mean?' She said that that's what happens when someone can't take care of you. I asked her if I knew anyone who'd been adopted. She said, 'You are.' I thought the way she told me was really rude," Arnold says. "My (adoptive) mother often was sick. She didn't care for me. My father was a truck driver who wasn't home a lot. We were semi-poor, so I was kind of on my own already when I made that deal with myself to be self-sufficient."

Since then, the number "8" has stood for his signature on many of his pieces. "That's me," he says of the number. "It's a loving number for me."

He's never met his biological father, who was in the U.S. Coast Guard when he was conceived. He met his biological mother when he was in his 30s, and they're grown close.

Frank Arnold with his painting "The Wiz"

Today, Arnold is a thick and cheery guy. His hair stands upright in a spray of waves that mimic the surf of the nearby Sea of Cortez. His soul patch is the tip of a small paint brush dipped in platinum. He favors glasses tinted blue, unless he's in the mood for the pair whose lenses are gold. He's down to earth, practical and relaxed. His gallery is a popular spot on San Jose del Cabo's Art Walk, each Thursday evening from fall into spring, and not just for the tequilas he pours.

The walls of the gallery are hung with his large canvases, most of which feature a tall, lean and solitary figure, their faces sketchy. They can be ghostly, yet also taut, conveying tension and power. His colors can range from muted to luminous, and at times the oils are applied so thickly that ridges emerge in relief from the flat panels. His paintings have been likened to the figurative works of the late Stanford University abstract expressionist Nathan Oliveira, and in Arnold's takes on guitars and dogs can be sensed the hand of Pablo Picasso, but he says he hasn't drawn inspiration from anyone but himself. "I never paid attention to anyone. I did my own thing," Arnold says.

As abstract as they are, virtually each painting is autobiographical. He refers to them as an entry in a diary, a chapter from his past or present. "They're stories about my life. I daydream while I paint, and go with that. They can be whimsical, painful, ironic," Arnold says. Family members will figure in this or that painting, sometimes via secret codes he etches here and there. He figures he's gone through four periods so far. One dwelled on mother and child. Another sprung from past incidents in his life. Nowadays he's focused on current events. "They're my stories," he says of his paintings, "but other people often bring their own stories to the paintings. The paintings trigger something in their own lives. Women especially break down and start to cry. They've lost something or someone, a love or a spouse."

Frank Arnold's "Cabo Bird"

But Arnold also occasionally indulges an impulse to be playful, allowing his colors to be bolder and brighter, his strokes broader, his figures more accessible. The dog and bird of "Spotty" could be straight out of a children's book, "Chair Fish" is more amusing than unsettling, and "Cabo Bird" - purchased by members of Seattle's Nordstrom family - looks as friendly as something that just flew in from San Jose del Cabo's nearby estuary. "I'm not often in a silly mood," says Arnold when asked why he doesn't show his lighter side more often. "I'm happy, but I don't feel very whimsical very often. And it's hard to pull off the whimsical as serious art."

The more carefree paintings tend to spring from his time in San Jose del Cabo. Paintings completed in Fresno are more structured, he says. "Life in America is more structured, more regimented, tighter," Arnold says. "You can mark every day in America by something stressful that happens to you. Here, the days float away, life disappears faster here; there are no stress points."

Born in Long Beach, Arnold spent his formative years in Visalia and Bakersfield before his family settled in Fresno. He graduated from McLane High School in Fresno in 1969. Five years later he earned an associate of arts degree in art at Fresno City College. He continued to study art at Fresno State College, but dropped out to teach art at night school in nearby Clovis. When he discovered that he both didn't like teaching and wasn't particularly good at it, he went into marketing. On weekends, away from his ad agency, he sculpted and painted "for fun." Before long, his artwork had made him "semi-successful."

Decanters of tequila await guests at Frank Arnold's gallery

About a decade ago, Arnold began to scout Mexico for a spot where he could build a combination gallery, studio and home, the kind of complex for which he doubted he could get a permit in the United States. Also, it had to be someplace where he could work outdoors whenever he wanted, in part to avoid the intake of paint fumes. The prosperous art communities of Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta were tantalizing, but more intimate San Jose del Cabo also was attracting an influx of artists. On top of that, San Jose del Cabo, with its international airport, was easy for him to get to, and the region's growing number of posh retreats, resort hotels and gated communities looked as if it would draw the sort of clientele that could appreciate and afford his paintings and sculptures. He finished the compound four years ago, and as he'd hoped his work now hangs and stands in homes throughout the United States and Canada. He figures that most of his sales in San Jose del Cabo are to collectors visiting from New York City, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, Aspen and San Francisco.

He will stay in San Jose del Cabo a little longer than usual this spring, primarily to see what develops when the G20 summit convenes in the town's new conference center in June. The gathering is to draw hundreds of finance ministers, presidents, diplomats and other dignitaries from the world's most prosperous economies. He doesn't know or even care whether he will sell any art during the conclave, but he has a hunch that he will get at least some beneficial exposure.

Aside from that, the compound he's built and the lifestyle he's created have worked out just as he envisioned when he thought of them more as fantasy than realistic goal. "I wanted a studio where I could work and a gallery where I could sell. I wanted a pretty simple life, and I think it has happened. I didn't expect to be a Fresno boy selling paintings to people from New York and Chicago in San Jose del Cabo. I've been blessed."