Paint My Hometown: GreenBrook, Danville and Beyond

by Jackson Kuo 郭敏俊

About This Book

23 years ago, my family moved from Taiwan into Greenbrook Community, a beautiful and quiet suburban residential area located at the southern skirt of the town of Danville, California. Danville is the place where I have been living the longest time in my life; therefore, I would like to call it “my second hometown.” This book is to honor Greenbrook Community, Danville where my two daughters grew up.

Like its name says, Greenbrook Community has two narrow and long greenbelts along with two creeks: San Ramon Creek and Cow Creek. Both sides of two creeks have trails paralleling with them and couple bridges crossing over the creeks which provide community residents a comfortable walking environment and a good quality of living space as well.

Greenbrook Community is a place where you can observe galaxy spreading over the dark sky in summer night and watch the Orion facing the Pole Star in winter night; you can enjoy the nature beauty of sun rise and sunset at nearby hills; you can watch ducks floating on the creek current, and watch the white egrets hovering over the dense bush looking for their prey; you can see hummingbird, blue gem, bee, flying around your back yard; or, you can walk along the creek side to listen to the natural symphony playing by those insects when it turns dark; you also can sit on the bench spotting in the surrounding parks trees to contemplating profound philosophy or just sit there and do nothing………

The natural beauty of Greenbrook also provides me abundant materials of painting, namely, new leaves and flowers in spring, colorful leaves in fall, trees without leaves in winter, and rain, and so on.

This book collects 120 paintings, including 100 colored paintings and 20 drawings I made for last two decades, most of them are landscapes which depicting the sceneries of Greenbrook Community and neighborhood communities, downtown Danville, and vicinal areas, including areas such as San Ramon, Alamo, Mt. Diablo, Pleasanton, Sunol, and Walnut Creek. In addition to landscape, some paintings of flowers and still objects are also collected in this book.

Here, although I am just an amateur I would like to present my favorite to Greenbook Community where I have been living for so many years. And finally, I would like to express my appreciation to my long time senior tennis partners, Finn Bronsen and Dr. Thomas Bauer, and Jennifer Tavares, Homeowner’s Liaison of Greenbrook Homes Association who spent their time to write prefaces and gave me many good suggestions for this book. Also, I want to thank my wife, Sophia, for her long time supporting me in pursing my interest of painting.

Jackson Kuo

Spring 2017 at Danville, California