JERRY VAN MEGERT(1938 – 2024) World-renowned artist Jerry Van Megert would have much preferred a party over an obituary. Which is just what he got last November, when the Carmel Art Association hosted a retrospective exhibition of his work from a long and celebrated career in fine art. Subsequently, after a brief journey through pancreatic cancer, Van Megert died on June 7. He was 86. Respected for painting portraiture that portrayed both how his subjects appeared and who they were, he also was adept at depicting the energy and emotions of the coastal forests and beachscapes framing the sea just outside his Pebble Beach home and on down to Big Sur. Van Megert, aware of the tides of change among people and places, appreciated his ability for capturing a moment in each. “The world around us is constantly changing before our eyes,” he often said. “Our friends and loved ones never remain the same, but a portrait captures forever the emotions we felt at that point in time, giving us the pleasure of reliving precious moments.” So, too, the precious places. Raised as an only child on a farm in Salem, Oregon until his sister, Bonnie, arrived when he was 11, Van Megert understood, from age 6 that he had been born a painter. He learned by doing until he received an art scholarship to Salem’s Willamette University. For two years at the private liberal arts college, he trained under the intense tutelage of art professor Carl Hill. Van Megert’s devotion to painting eclipsed his willingness to sit through the general education classes required to complete a four-year degree. He was ready to paint fine art. In 1968, Van Megert headed south to explore the West Coast art enclaves in California. He found his community in Carmel and his “painter’s perch” in a Pebble Beach sea cottage overlooking the craggy coastline. The property belonged to Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., then CEO and Chairman of his eponymous corporation. Enamored of Van Megert’s work, he offered the artist a six-month residency which grew to 50 years, all on the assurance of a handshake. In 1998, Jerry Van Megert received a call in the night from Vicki Stewart, a Bechtel employee headed to work at the Pebble Beach property, who had lost her way along the roads winding through the dark forest. He rescued her, invited her to dinner, and the two became friends for the next 30 years. This included annual visits to Paris, where he would photograph street scenes, many at her behest, which he would later interpret on canvas at his studio there.“Jerry and I were like each other’s favorite beloved cousins,” Stewart said. “We had such an easy compatibility and so much fun together. While Jerry was naturally introverted, I was his polar opposite. We were Yin and Yang. Our relationship wasn’t romantic; it was deeper.” In 1970, Jerry Van Megert joined the Carmel Art Association (CAA), where he found a cadre of colleagues in this legendary art colony by the sea. His also found community among his fellow campmates at the Bohemian Club, a gentleman’s social club in San Francisco, and the Bohemian Grove, a 160-acre encampment among the redwoods in Northern California. In 2018, the artist relinquished his coastal cottage and moved into The Park Lane in Monterey, where he continued to paint, daily, as he had every day of his life, until just last year. A celebration of Van Megert’s life and of the coastal community he called home will endure through the legacy of his fine-art paintings, through which he conveyed both his deep appreciation for both. The CAA has created a special archival collection to preserve Van Megert’s work.