Artist Lester Ancheta discusses the inspiration for his latest works, paintings depicting a pair of samurai warriors.
Marcus Larson/News-Register

Artist Lester Ancheta used his horse barn as a studio while working on his Project 100 series during the summer months.
Marcus Larson/News-Register

“The Joyous Lake”

“Galaxy Stroll”

“Radiating Serenity”

“Manifestation”

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Once last summer, painter Lester Ancheta found himself in the passenger seat of his car while his partner, Sarah Hahn, drove all the way from McMinnville to San Francisco to see Ancheta’s parents. He couldn’t help with the driving — because he had to paint.

Ancheta embarked on a 100-painting journey on July 20, and the deal he made with himself and his fans was that he would paint one work every day for 100 days, and each would be available to buy for $100.

In addition, he filmed a one-minute daily video blog for his website that told the story of creating each painting for “Project 100.”
Each canvas is one foot by one foot and covered with a colorful scene done in acrylics. The subjects vary, but patterns jump out.

Water is common: Days 1 and 100 both involve some body of it, as do a great many in between. People don’t appear much, but animals abound. Days 58, 59 and 60 depict elephants, and a red-tailed hawk circles around Day 68.

Most of the paintings involve nature in some way, but Days 73, 74 and 75 are cityscapes, with the Golden Gate Bridge popping out the bottom left corner of 73.

And if Picasso had a Blue Period, then Ancheta had a Mountain Period on Days 18, 19 and 20. Lined up side by side, the works create a range.

That mountains appear in his work is no surprise. Ancheta and Hahn live at the top of High Heaven Road outside McMinnville, so high they can see snowcapped peaks on a clear day. He often worked outside in the barn during the summer, and all aspects of the natural world that surrounded him inspired his paintings, he said.

Ancheta hasn’t always lived above the world and above the fog. Born in The Philippines, he grew up in San Diego. Although he showed artistic talent in high school, he studied civil engineering and became a software engineer.

But the work wasn’t fulfilling. In 2006, he quit, deciding to pursue art as a career. He came to McMinnville, where Hahn had attended Linfield College.

The couple moved into the little house on High Heaven so Hahn’s horses would have room to roam. Ancheta has been painting ever since.

But he hasn’t left the digital world behind completely.

He uses his website and Facebook to allow fans to follow his work and even give input. The idea for the dolphins he painted on Day 7 came from a fan, of which he has 52, according to the counter on the website. He sells his paintings online and his entire gallery is there.

The video blogs he included with each of the 100 paintings let followers understand the experience of creating the painting, not just the final product, he said. Often, those were the hardest part for Ancheta, because distilling an entire day of painting into one minute — and making that minute interesting — was more challenging than he predicted.

Ancheta’s experiment in creating a new painting daily came to an end on Oct. 27. That day he painted a scene from a friend’s dream. The friend stood in a boat and held on to a lightning bolt.

Ancheta called the painting “Captain of Your Own Soul.” Coming from a man who left a life he didn’t want in order to pursue a passion he loved, the title sounds downright autobiographical.