Through a native son's eyes

MILTON QUON lines up more than a dozen sketchbooks along a ledge in a gallery of the Chinese American Museum in downtown L.A. Inside, drawings and paintings detail the adventures of his 92 years. Trips to New York, London and Xi'an, China. Visits to Stockton, to see the family of his wife, Peggy. The special at the Hof's Hut restaurant in Torrance.

"I was on a kick there for a while of painting every meal I had," Quon says, giggling, as he leafs through pages of watercolors depicting entrees and salads. "It doesn't matter where I am. In a bank, I'll sketch the people waiting in line with me. On buses, I'd do sketches of the driver.

"One time I was on a cruise, and after we had had a day ashore, I was sketching the boat from the dock. The problem was, it was leaving," he says, still describing that day in 1988 as vividly as if it were last week. "I had to jump, otherwise I would have missed the boat. But I left my little sketchbook behind, so somewhere is a sketchbook with an unfinished boat in it."

Quon's desire to record his daily experiences is the basis for the exhibition "Impressions: Milton Quon's Los Angeles." The show at the Chinese American Museum contains more than 50 pieces, mostly watercolors, as well as a smattering of sketchbooks, Christmas cards and commercial work he did at Disney, the ad firm BBD&O and the packaging company Sealright.

Though not by the artist's intention, the paintings provide a history of the city he has called home his entire life. One, from 1952, shows a grocery store at Chavez Ravine a decade before Dodger Stadium was built. Another, from 1983, depicts a downtown train yard with the L.A. skyline in the background -- a view considerably changed today. A third presents a now-shuttered factory on the Eastside in 1989. Still, much of Quon's work revolves around more-tranquil scenes along the coast: Malibu at twilight in 1992, Santa Monica Pier in 2002.

If you can spot a trend in Quon's work as he's aged, it's that the earlier pieces use pen lines to create a structure into which bold color is applied, whereas his more recent work tends toward the abstract and pastels. "Now I'm more of the mind that less is more," he says. "When I was in school, I took architecture -- a lot of drafting, a lot of line work."