In this plein air landscape, "Mustard and Oaks" the largesse and grandeur of California is captured by a succession of overlapping hills receding into a blue-gray distance: this, the artist effectively communicates, is a vast and effulgent landscape. The bright mustard in the foreground, the rich lavenders along the hillside, and the interlocking permutations of green suggest healthfulness and, by extension, abundance. The strip of road leading the viewer’s eye through the painting, provides a sense of the modern - a human presence in the artist’s beloved Southern California scenery. Although Lamb generally laments the incursions of modernity, here he seems to accept the idea of the natural and the man-made coexisting. The painting is signed “J. Lamb” and is housed in a beautiful, hand-gilded gold frame.