Creature of Habitat. In the 1980s Spencer Reynolds loved surf media — the vogue outer world. Southwest Oregon was inner world. He was a boy in Brookings, Oregon, a wet coastal bump six miles from California. This was no surfer’s Eden. Cold. Rain. Huge swells. Rocks and closeouts. Epic fishing — an angler’s Eden. But Reynolds didn’t fish. He painted, as he still does. Sometimes in his sylvan hillside studio above the Chetco River. Sometimes in Semi-Aquatic, his clean midtown gallery. Sometimes atop a scenic glen amid spruce and spindrift. The coast that cast him away. In 2008 he returned — for life, for family. Natal homing, like salmon to his dear Chetco. — Michael H. Kew
