FINALLY!!! I finished my first painting for 2024!!
This is a view a saw many years ago from the Boy Scout Trailhead in Joshua Tree National Park, California. I haven't decided on a title yet, but I'll come up with something. When I do, I'll offer it on my website. The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge 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
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.
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
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
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
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
Yet another painting of Joshua Tree National Park!!
Rocks 'n' Clouds showcases some hills made of gneiss (pronounced "nice"), a type of rock found everywhere in the local Mojave Desert. These hills happen to be in Joshua Tree National Park, a place that -- as everyone knows -- is one of my favorite places on earth.
I love messing around with things like dramatic lighting and cloud shadows, the latter which I've done here. In fact, I put a lot of effort into painting clouds -- I suspect I'm really a skyscape painter with some desert thrown in! 😃
So -- I'm tempted to take a break and to start getting into an autumn mindset. I love fall and the beginnings of all the neat and fun holidays that follow! But -- there's lots to do yet in whatever time I have left in this life, so-o-o -- the break will need to be a short one. 😕.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Mt. San Gorgonio is one of the two mountains that cause this area to be a desert. It, along with Mt. San Jacinto and the associated mountains, form the "rain shadow" that makes the rain fall on the coastal side of the mountains, but tends to exclude rain from here; hence, desert.
🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵
San Gorgonio is also the title of my latest painting:
The size is 11" x 14" / 27.9cm x 35.6cm. This piece will be a "thank you" gift to a couple that helped us out while The Wiffee was in a nursing facility. (By the way, she's out now and is doing fine). Sometimes the yellow flowers don't photograph as prominently as they appear in the painting, but hopefully, you get the idea.
Meanwhile, painting will be interesting for a while -- the lens implants following my cataract surgery have developed a cloudy film, giving everything a dreamy look. Treatment is fast and easy -- laser treatment. But getting in to see the ophthalmologist has been quite a challenge! Soon, I hope!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Years ago, I was in Joshua Tree National Park on a cloudy day, and I was lucky (or blessed) enough to be in a spot where the clouds opened up just a little and shone a spotlight on a Joshua tree in front of a monzogranite formation. It didn't last long, but I was able to get a few pictures of it on black-and-white film before the spotlight disappeared.
Sadly, I don't know where that roll of film is today, although I know I still have it SOMEwhere! But between my memories and more recent photos I took to provide the details, I was able to reconstruct the scene as I saw it (except the sky was a more solid gray, not as dramatic-looking as I painted it. Size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
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| The Sun and the Rain |
I also finished a piece showing a handsome desert bird -- a Phainopepla (pronounced fane-oh-PEP-la). They look sort of like black cardinals, but they aren't cardinals at all.
On the left are the birds' favorite goodies -- desert mistletoe berries. Like the Christmastime mistletoe, the desert variety is somewhat parasitic, and birds that eat the berries (like our friends, the Phainopeplas) drop the seeds, typically after it passes through their digestive tracts, and the seeds are deposited on some unsuspecting, innocent plant to grow and begin the cycle anew.
But the birds have those neat crests on their heads, black feathers (females are gray) and red eyes. They're quite striking and are about 8" / 20cm long. The size of this painting is, like the above piece, 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
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| Phainopepla |
Mark Junge
Visiting Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona last month definitely energized my desire to paint the desert -- I've completed three small paintings since we returned on 04 April!! All are 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
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| A Desert Stroll |
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| Eagle's Nest |
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| Arizona Desert |
I'd say it worked!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Life has a way of putting us (me) behind schedule. I dealt with Covid in January and seemingly got past it. Then last month I had a bout of vertigo -- that dizzy feeling where the world seems to be spinning around you even if one is sitting or lying down! Thankfully that's over with now. Vertigo can be an after-effect of Covid -- I've had brief episodes of vertigo before, but this time it lasted a week. NOT FUN!!!
At least I did manage to squeeze in a new painting of the Arizona desert -- it's entitled Cactus and Clouds, measures 11" x 14" / 27.9cm x 35.6cm, and depicts an area southwest of Wickenburg, AZ:
Otherwise, I'm now working on a painting requested by a friend -- sort of Halloween-ish, but it's not of Halloween. I may post it here, but I may not, in which case I'll write about something else.
I'm still feeling fatigued a lot and often don't feel like doing much, but I try to find a balance -- paint while I still can, but be lazy when I want to be lazy! After being a workaholic for so long, I've learned to love laziness!!
Spring is almost here. Enjoy the turn of the season, pray for Ukraine, and thank you for your support.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Well, what th...
I finished a painting a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't written about it yet!! Until now!
Duck Pond (note the two duckies!) is a scene featuring Mount Sneffels in Colorado. It measures 18" x 24" / 45.7cm x 61cm. The mountains are close to what they actually look like; the foreground is a mix of reality and imagination.
The autumn colors tell us this must be mid-late September. The Colorado high country is spectacular at that time, and I miss seeing it.
Enjoy!!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Cactus Wren is my last painting from 2020! 08" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm, acrylic on panel.
The males and females look pretty much the same, so I couldn't tell you if this birdie is a boy or a girl. While I can't say cactus wrens are songbirds, they make a distinctive sound that I've heard referred to as the "call of the desert." I agree with that characterization. This is what they sound like.
I love these critters!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Blue on Blue: Western Scrub Jays is my latest painting. The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm and features a couple of scrub jays that we find out here in the desert. This species of jay have no crests on their heads. The two are sitting on a monzogranite rock typical of those in Joshua Tree National Park, CA, USA.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Meep meep!! I bet everybody knows who makes that sound!!
Of course, it's the roadrunner from the Warner Bros. cartoons who loves burning up the asphalt as he evades Wile E. Coyote or even just because speed is fun! The roadrunner's name is Beep Beep, although it sounds like "Meep meep" when he "speaks."
I just finished a painting of a greater roadrunner (but not the cartoon one), for a collector who is accumulating a series of artworks depicting birds of the Southwestern deserts.
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| Meep Meep! 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
