Painting The Pedernal

Last month a group of painters spent a week together at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM.

It was to mark the 10th anniversary of painting there every autumn and to celebrate the landscape

that survives and lives in all of us in times of distress and trouble.

Connect to the tradition. Take a deep breathe and

PAINT IT, DRAW IT, WRITE IT, DANCE, IN IT, WALK AROUND IN IT!

INFORMATION ABOUT THE  PAINTINGS - top to bottom

SIZES ARE APPROXIMATE

JOHANNA HILL - ACRYLIC ON PAPER, 10" X 12"

MEREDITH NEMIROV - OIL ON CANVAS, 10" X 30"

ANN DETTMER - OIL ON CANVAS, 11' X 14"

JULIA REID - OIL ON CANVAS, 11" X 14

LYNNE HORNING - OIL ON YUPO PAPER 
SHARON NEMIROV - WATERCOLOR, W/C PENCIL ON GESSOED PAPER, 6" X 11"
PEGGY SUE RICHARDS - WATERCOLOR - 11" X 15"
CAROL LEE - WATERCOLOR - 7" X 21"
RANDYE MANDELL - OIL ON CANVAS - 10" X 30"
JOSEPHINE FALLENIUS - OIL ON CANVAS - 18" X 24"
 

LAST LEAVES AUTUMN 2015 - COLORADO

 RIDGWAY HILL, view from the backyard, 10/11/15, 11" x 15"

VIEW FROM THE SILESCA CABIN, Uncompahgre Plateau, 10/7/15, 14.5" x 21.5"

 

 FROM THE GOTHIC ROAD, Crested Butte, 9/25/15, 7" x 21"

THE WILSONS, Telluride, 10/1/15, 7" x 21"

Last year I posted LAST LEAVES OF AUTUMN, COLORADO/NEW MEXICO.

This year I am posting before my week in New Mexico. Just on-site watercolors

of my Colorado landscape! What a glorious and extremely warm fall, way into the middle of

October!  

PAINTING THE RUNOFF

 ALONG THE UNCOMPAHGRE, 6/24/15

"When the stream of water is running, there is no regular rhythm but the stream is doing the 

  same thing all the time."   Arthur Dove 
 

 A SPOT ALONG THE SAN MIGUEL RIVER, 6/17/15

 EARLY SPRING, 4/14/15

CASCADE FALLS, OURAY,  6/30/15

The best way I know to paint moving water is not to paint, but to start by sitting and watching what the water is doing, for 15-30 minutes.  What I mean by what it is doing is to see what shapes the water makes when it splashes OVER a rock as opposed to going AROUND a rock. Love Dove mentions, those shapes keep repeating as the water follow it's course.

You can see these original watercolors at the Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Telluride. www.ohbejoyfulgallery.com

The Winter Woods

 Winter trees in the winter woods, aspens, lyrical,
trunks growing out of mounds of white snow
the quiet

 black marks become notes on a musical score, moving from sharp to flat
in the introspective season of winter as they lean towards each other
to speak of cold 

In the studio, a need to animate
the spaces deep in the woods
between the trees and branches
something man-made, a
human presence through a
pattern
geometric / organic

patterns in nature

A Different Landscape

Just spent four days in New Orleans where we enjoyed exploring a very different landscape.

  We enjoyed the humidity after an extremely dry start to the new year here in Southwest Colorado. However, this morning I am looking at a foot and a half of new snow and spent a couple of hours shoveling out yesterday when we returned. 

Winter is back!

 At the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve

boardwalk trails guided you and actually allowed you to walk through the swamp.

The spiky Palmettos made wonderful graphic shadow shapes.

 The swamp floor was a tangle of moss covered roots with everything wet and decomposing.

 We have never seen anything like this before!

The Bald Cypress sends up woody projectiles throughout the swamp.

One theory is that because their roots are submerged underwater, these "tree's knees", as they are called, supply oxygen to the roots. Another possible reason is that they stabilize the trees that grow in very muddy conditions. 

We spent Sunday morning in Audubon Park. A great discovery was Ochsner Island or Bird Island.
It is one of the most prominent bird rookeries in the state, over a hundred years old.
To read more about the birds there: www.auduboninstitute.org/audubon-park/favorites/bird-island
The live oaks covered with moss gave you a real feeling of the old south.
Timeless nature!

Sunday Aspens and a Few Drawings

Afternoon sunlight on snow

shadows of aspens

stripes

Three drawings in the aspen forest

I return to Horsefly Mesa all winter to draw and paint the aspen trees.
I cannot find the reason why this particular stand of aspens are not white. 
They are a variety of tan, ecru and the gray of dead branches.
My on-site paintings capture the scene, light, patterns, shapes,
the drawings are more playful and allow me to find or create shapes
that are more abstracted and take on a life of their own.
 
 

 

New Work for a New Year

Looking back 

and looking forward

new work begins in
older work.

Going through my Moleskine books from 2006, I scanned and printed out all my tree drawings and hung them on the studio wall.

I am looking for drawings that "talk" to each other and create a group of like minded shapes and points of view, a conversation.

 This drawing from November 2012 was the basis for the next two color paintings.

 Subterranean Nine, rotated so the trunk is lying across the page,

the tree becomes a horizon, a below and above, earth and underneath.

 Untitled One, done while I was in Spain in 2013,
is influenced by the striated columns of the limestone churches
and the patterning on the Mudejar architecture in the south.
These two works on paper are 22" x 30", watercolor, gouache,
ink and colored pencil.
They can be seen at the Michael Warren Contemporary Gallery in Denver.

NOT AN ASPEN, a cactus for Christmas and a New Year's Juniper

 All species of cactus originated in The Americas.

Here's a saguaro in Tucson, AZ.
It would become my next figure in the landscape if I moved from mountains to desert.

This one must be hundreds of years old.

 Back in Colorado on New Year's Day with an old Juniper.
Figure and Tree in the Landscape. 

Snowy pine in my backyard,

and a snow drawing.

 

WINTER IMAGES, 2014/1015