More Inspiration from Claude Lorrain

Here is another painting by one of my favorite painters of all time: Pastoral Landscape, Claude Lorrain, o/c, 38.25" x 51.25" (1638). (I think the original may be a little darker than this image).

Claude had a way of making balanced, harmonious and peaceful landscapes. In this case, he included the ruins of a Roman temple (I'd LOVE to see a scene like this!) on the left and, althogh hard to see here, there appear to be additional ruins in the distance across the river. Claude also liked to paint the skies of dawn or sunset; here, he didn't do the sky with his classic yellowish tones.

As a landscape painter who creates mostly desert scenes, it's hard for me to imagine doing paintings like Claude's. We just don't have those tall trees, hazy atmospheric conditions or, of course, Roman ruins. We have saguaro cactus, Joshua trees, palm trees and/or cottonwood trees under certain conditions, and clear, low-humidity air.

I guess if I want to paint like this, I'll have to branch out, more than I have, into other western landscapes. I may need to, anyway -- not everyone loves desert paintings (although I don't understand why not!)

So -- just give it time. I doubt I'll ever be the Claude Lorrain of the 21st century, but I'll just have to see what I can do!

Some New Drawings of the Desert

I've been drawing more than painting lately in my efforts to produce artwork that should be affordable to almost anyone. Here are two of the latest batch of drawings:

Pikes Peak

Pikes Peak                                                           18" x 24"

Pikes Peak is a painting I made back in 2006. I always liked the piece, but I felt it needed just a little more...perhaps a little tweaking.

So I tweaked it, and I (personally) think it looks better now.

Pikes Peak is the mountain west of Colorado Springs, CO. This view shows the mountain in early September after a storm covered the hill with snow. It's early morning, and this is how it appears if you visit the Garden of the Gods Club, named after the Garden of the Gods -- a series of red sandstone rocks and spires in the middle distance. Pikes Peak is one of Colorado's "14ers" -- the elevation at the top is at or over 14,000 feet above sea level.

Colorado has some spectacular scenery, and this area is certainly no exception

Saint Jacinto's Spring

My latest painting:

Primavera de San Jacinto (Saint Jacinto's Spring)                            20" x 24"

It's springtime in the desert! Mt. San Jacinto is west of Palm Springs, CA and is one of two mountain ranges that makes the desert what is is by blocking most rain clouds that arrive from the west.

This is the north-facing side of the mountain. I always loved the abrupt rising of the mountain from the flat plain, the result of earthquake activity that lifted this hunk of earth up into the air. The other side of "San Jac" has the rolling foothills that one expects with mountains, and also features green grass following the winter rains.

But this side receives little rain, and the vegetation shows it.

Still, the view takes on a rugged beauty all its own. This is the beginning of the California desert, and my own little desert world begins right here.

Welcome to Saint Jacinto's spring!

Inspirational Desert Paintings

It seems that I either haven't had much time for painting lately, and/or I've just been too tired. I started a desert painting that is taking forever to get done, and I had hoped to start and finish at least two, maybe three, smaller Halloween-themed artworks before the day actually arrives. I haven't even begun those pieces yet!

As an alternative, I'll post an image of a painting by an artist buddy, P.A. Nisbet. Some of his paintings appeared in an art magazine back in 1987, and they had a profound impact on me and the direction I was to take in my own art.

Magic Kingdom        P.A. Nisbet      oil/canvas       36" x 48"

This painting is one of those things that changed my live forever. It's hard for me to put my finger on it, but Magic Kingdom has a mysterious, spiritual quality to it that I hope I capture in my own paintings. However, when I'M the one making the art, I have to depend on others to tell me if I succeeded in capturing the feeling that elevates an image to more than just an illustration.

The area depicted in Magic Kingdom is the Pinacate region of Sonora, Mexico. Some of southern Arizona looks much like this. I'd love to visit this place, but a local naturalist wrote an article about the illegal drug activities that go on there and the efforts that the police make in trying to bring it under control. I wouldn't feel safe there, but maybe one day, Pinacate will once again return to being a place of sublime beauty and peace.

To see more of this artist's work, click here.

Drawing the Desert

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to make some small colored-pencil drawings that I could sell for a much lower price than my paintings. At this point, I've made a little over 20 drawings, and hopefully I can do a few more before Saturday. I'll be attending a local craft fair, which will be somewhat of a marketing test for the drawings. We'll see if selling lots of inexpensive drawings is more do-able than selling a few, expensive paintings.

Here are a few examples of what I've been up to. Each is 8" x 10" (20cm x 25cm) sketched on colored paper. None are titled or framed.

New Painting: "Silver Ledge"

I FINALLY finished a new painting that I was frantically working on to enter in an exhibit. I still gave the piece all of the TLC it deserved, but I think I've been painting more than I've been sleeping!

Silver Ledge, 18" x 24"

Silver Ledge is the name of the mine -- or what's left of it -- that sits a little south of Silverton, Colorado along the Million Dollar Highway (aka Hwy. 550). Behind the structures lies the sprawling Chattanooga Valley which used to hold the small town of Chattanooga (not to be confused with the one in Tennessee!). The town was destroyed in the late 19th century, but I haven't found a definitive reason for how that happened: it was either by avalanche, flood or fire. In any case, the town was never rebuilt and only a few buildings remain there today -- none visible from this vantage point.

Far in the distance sits Bear Mountain. Much of the region displayed the glorious golden yellows of fall aspen, but this view seemed to show few aspen and lots of Colorado blue spruce.

The Silverton area was known for producing lots of mines, many of them silver. But the Silver Ledge's primary commodity was tungsten. It also extracted smaller amounts of gold, silver, lead and zinc.

The painting shows how the mine looked the last time I was there -- September, 1997. I understand efforts were being made in 2010 by a preservation group to prevent further deterioration of the minehead and also to cleanup the tailings which were leaching lead, zinc and copper into Mineral Creek (which runs below the embankment on the left and off into the Valley).

I've been wanting to paint this image for almost seventeen years -- and I've finally done it! It isn't the desert, but the site is in southwestern Colorado and we can see lots of distance from this spot. So it fits my tagline which you would find on my website and on my business cards: The Vast Spaces of the Southwest!