It's no secret that my favorite season of the year is autumn, when trees seem to be huge flowers that bloom in radiant colors.
Autumn Splendor is the latest painting that shows my idea of what fall looks like (which it doesn't in the desert where I live!). Complete with some mallards, my favorite species of duckies.
The location is imaginary -- but it's a place I'd love to see. Enjoy!!
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
I was surprised to learn that seagulls tend not to occur in the Hawaiian Islands. Apparently, they don't care much for the food they find there. Thus, they only stop by temporarily if they're migrating.
But the tropicbirds fill that ecological niche!
There is also a red-tailed species. I'll have to paint one of those birdies sometime, too.
Enjoy!!
Mark Junge
Autumn Glory is my newest painting. This is one of the peaks in the Elk Range in Colorado -- near Aspen, and the same mountain range that includes the fabled Maroon Bells. I think this mountain is Pyramid Peak, although I'm not sure about that. The size is 11" x 14" / 28cm x 36cm. I may do a reshoot of the painting, since this one didn't come out that great.
I had considered adding some wildlife to the scene -- some mallard ducks or maybe some deer (I DID see a buck and doe together when I was there), but then I decided -- naaahhh. I didn't feel like it!
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Extinction is a new painting in a surrealistic style, a look I rather enjoy.
The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm and shows a post-apocalyptic scene, We don't know if the female is the last living human on earth, or if she's the only person out in the open. A destroyed city and clock loom in the distance, and the ground is giving off a yellowish polluting gas. Dead trees and dry, cracked earth complete the setting.
Sometimes the current events and what they mean to the future of our planet totally depress me, and that's the way I felt when I began this painting. There are "leaders" who seem hellbent on destroying the planet just so they can feed their hyperinflated egos. I know someday Jesus Christ will come, but how much is it going to hurt until He does?
May He help us all.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Two more desert landscape paintings -- one small, one mini! Both are of Joshua Tree National Park.
JT12 5" x 7" / 12.7cm x 17.8cm 
Dawn II 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm
This is a painting of a desert wash in the southern part of Joshua Tree National Park.
This area spawns glorious wildflower color in the spring (if enough rain has fallen at the right time), and even washes -- "rivers" that are dry most of the time -- features bursts of color. In this case, chuparosa shrubs produce red blooms that are much loved by hummingbirds. The smoke tree will bloom -- if it does -- later, most likely in June.
The size of this painting is 5" x 7"/12.7cm x 17.8cm.
As we all know, Aries is a zodiac sign which references a ram. In this case Aries is a desert or peninsular bighorn sheep.
Actually, this is the second time I painted a bighorn and named him Aries, so the painting is entitled Aries II.
In my opinion, bighorn sheep are the majestic animals of the desert -- so noble, so graceful -- and so endangered. The herd populations are slowly increasing in size, but they've got a way to go in areas that break up their habitat with highways, development, humans...stuff like that.
This scene is in Joshua Tree National Park, although I added the rock pinnacle that the bighorn is standing on, and I added the bighorn, too -- this one actually lives at the Living Desert Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Palm Desert, CA. I think I did an OK job of showing the space the way it would look with the bird's eye view, the pinnacle and the sheepie!
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or SouthwestSpaces.com
Aries II 18" x 24" / 45.7cm x 61cm
Moonlit Hunter is my latest painting. It shows an elf owl (Micrathene whitneyi) in the Arizona desert under the light of a full moon. These sparrow-sized (4.9"-5.7"/12.5cm-14.5cm) critters are the smallest owl species and eat mostly insects.
The Native American pot is somewhat a product of my imagination. It has an owl motiff -- I've never seen a pot like this, but I've seen pottery figurines of owls. So I used the basic design of the figurines and placed them on a pot. The owl is actually sitting on a piece of cholla wood that ended up in the pot somehow.
The winter constellation Orion the Hunter appears in the night sky. It seemed appropriate to go with an owl -- a hunter!
The painting is my own, but it was inspired by a piece by the late Larry Toschik that appeared in an old Arizona Highways magazine. Unfortunately, prints of it were never made available or I would have gotten one.
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
I would call Joshua Tree National Park a big desert!! And a small part of an even bigger desert.
This latest painting shows the Park at the very beginning of sunrise. We were getting sunrises like this every morning for a while, and I'm sure we'll get more when the monsoon season starts up in a month or so.
Anyway, here it is. 5" x 7" / 12.7cm x 17.8cm. Enjoy!!
Mark Junge
This isn't exactly the newest painting of Joshua Tree National Park, but it IS one I forgot to post here on my blog!!
As before, it's 5" x 7"/12.7cm x 17.8cm and can be framed or, according to my notions, placed on a small mini easel for display. Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Yet ANOTHER small (5" x 7"/12.7cm x 17.8cm) painting of Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA.
I stretched reality just a little -- normally, Joshua trees and the yellow-flowered goldenbush don't bloom at the same time. But that's not to say it couldn't happen!
Enjoy!!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
What a combination -- paintings of Hawaii (with hula dancers) and the desert in Joshua Tree National Park!! Well -- somebody's gotta do it! đŸ˜ƒ
I wish I was better at painting hooman beans than I am, but I guess I just need to paint them more often. But so far, this is what I'm able to do. Enjoy!!
OK -- just one more small (5" x 7" / 13cm x 18cm) painting of Joshua Tree National Park. Now I want to see how the public/tourists like 'em before I do more.
For now, I'm working on a painting of Hawai'i and hula dancers -- something just for me. It's unlikely I'll offer the original for sale, but maybe I'll make it available for prints on Fine Art America.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Yet another small painting of the desert (specifically, Joshua Tree National Park in California, USA). I want to see if I can squeak out one more painting with the tourists in mind (to be sold locally), but for now, this is the latest. Enjoy!!
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| Dawn II |
Mark Junge
A coupla more small (5" x 7" / 12.7cm x 17.8cm) paintings of Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA. Maybe three more to do, then I'll either place them somewhere where tourists might see 'em and get 'em as souvenirs, or I'll offer 'em at a boutique our church is having in mid-May. We'll jus' hafta see!
These will NOT appear on my website. They'll be sold with mini easels to set the pieces on, and I'd rather not have to deal with packaging up the easels and the paintings for shipping.
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Good grief -- I just realized I didn't post at all during March!!
But now it's April, I survived April Fool's Day, and I'm moving forward -- finally!
I finished two paintings last month. One is a somewhat surreal piece which, as usual, I can never really explain. The other is a scene from Joshua Tree National Park and is definitely a miniature painting -- 7" x 5" / 17.8cm x 12.7cm. My plan is to make several (or many) paintings this size and make them available as tabletop pieces to the many tourists who visit the National Park. They'll be offered with mini easels, or the collectors can have them framed if they prefer.
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| Memories of the Dark 11" x 14"/27.9cm x 35.6cm |
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| Hi Desert in Bloom 7" x 5"/17.8cm x 12.7cm |
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Arizona Desert with Bunny is my latest painting. The title is somewhat reminiscent of how landscape artists used to title their paintings -- nothing poetic or unusual, just descriptive of what a viewer could see for himself or herself. And "bunny" really should be "desert cottontail rabbit," but "bunny" is cuter and shorter!
The site is somewhere east of Quartzsite, AZ, but I don't remember the name of the place. I normally conceal critters more than I did here, but somehow, a bunny more in the open seemed appropriate.
Enjoy!
Arizona Desert with Bunny 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Western Tanagers is the title, and the subject, of my latest painting. Size is 10" x 8" / 25cm x 20cm.
I was blessed enough to see a male tanager in a desert willow tree at our previous residence. Obviously, these are among the many birdies that display "sexual dimorphorism" where the boys and the girls look differently.
The male is in his breeding plumage; in fall and winter, he loses the red from his head and looks pretty much like the female.
Nature lesson for today!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Borregos CimarrĂ³nes is the title of my latest painting. It's Spanish for "bighorn sheep" which appear in the work.
Otherwise, the hills and open spaces of this special place have long appealed to me, and I've painted this site numerous times, each a little different from each other. In springtime, the wildflowers color the area: yellow brittlebush and red-tipped ocotillo dominate the view. I included the spike-tipped rosettes of agave: people who know desert ecology have observed ocotillo and agave tend to appear together, at least in the California deserts.
Another thing I've noticed here is the ground isn't all a uniform color. I've noticed spotty regions of various tints, like green or red. The colors are quite subtle and don't show in the above photograph. But they DO show in the painting itself.
I imagine I'll do more paintings of this vista, although I'll have to continue working off of photos I've taken in years past. I've since learned that this entire area is part of a University of California at Irvine research center. My human presence could affect their findings and I don't want to contaminate their findings in any way. (Besides, in my old age, hiking in these places is hard on me now).
I plan (for now) on keeping this piece, although I may offer it as a print on Fine Art America. Ahhh...I sure love the desert!
Mark Junge
MarkJunge.com or SouthwestSpaces.com
New painting of a desert cardinal (aka pyrrhuloxia), found in southern Arizona and New Mexico, and southwestern Texas, then south into Mexico.
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| Desert Cardinal 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25" |
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Happy 2023 to all the humans and the little (and big) critters on the earth!!
Following is a painting I just finished showing a Bullock's oriole that once graced a desert willow we had at our previous residence. We only saw him once, long enough for me to grab a few photos of him before he took off.
Bullock's orioles are the western version of Baltimore orioles which prefer the eastern part of the country; in fact, where their respective ranges overlap, the two are known to hybridize. Ornithologists have an ongoing debate over whether or not these two birds are really the same species.
The world has some incredibly beautiful birds, and I expect to be painting some of them over the next few months. A gallery owner in Ohio asked me to place some bird paintings in her gallery. That could be a great opportunity to show in a part of the country I've never been to yet!
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| Bullock's Oriole 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
We'll see how this all works out. Hopefully for the better!
Mark Junge
