Davis Leo West

Davis Leo West dazzled audiences for a half-century as the principal scenic painter first at the San Francisco Opera then at the San Diego Opera.

"I once spent hours searching our warehouse for a table shown in a photograph of an old opera set," said Mike Wilcox, a veteran property man at the San Francisco Opera, where West began his career. "It turned out that the table didn't exist. It was just something Davis had painted onto the drop."

In San Francisco, West was known as the Commander, a salute to his World War II service in the Navy. West had skipped out of high school in San Francisco to work with his father, Leo West, who was his first teacher in the art of painting reality onto a flat surface. He later apprenticed under the legendary Eugene Dunkel, a Byelorussian who taught a generation of American scenic artists painting techniques many feel are now lost.

When illness forced his retirement in 1995, West put aside his brushes and turned to writing. A master artisan of an ancient discipline and later an accomplished author, West was 74 when he died at his Alpine home.