Finished the Joshua Tree Scene!

I mentioned last time I was working on a scene from Joshua Tree National Park, and I posted the photo I was using as a reference. Well, it's finished!! I even included a desert cottontail bunny-rabbit, which I haven't done in a while since it's a little hard to paint them when the artwork is small!

One Desert Morning                                               18" x 24" / 45.7cm x 61cm

Detail -- the Bunny-Rabbit!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Arizona Desert with Bunny

 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

Halloween Art

 Halloween has come and gone -- too quickly, in my opinion.

Now my thoughts have turned to Thanksgiving, another point in the season that I need to prepare me for Christmas.

But first, here are some Halloween-themed paintings that I finished recently. (One CAN be a Halloween image, but it's really a nocturne that could be thought of as creepy and Halloween-ish). 😃

Hi, Bunny! Hi, Pumpkin       8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

A Walk in the Moonlight       8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

The Morning After               8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

And finally, one painting that is just about autumn, Colorado style near Cripple Creek:

Untitled (so far)                 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

Finally, I started on some Thanksgiving paintings that I hope to post here soon.

Enjoy the season! It's moving through fast!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Desert Sunset -- on a Bunny??

"Desert Sunset on a Bunny." ON A BUNNY????

Well, yeah...if you've been following this blog for a while, you know I'm addicted to cute little bunnies, whether domesticated or wild. They (along with guinea piggies) have gotta be the cutest critters in God's creation!

So I often place desert cottontail bunny-rabbits in my desert scenes, watching the viewer before the viewer notices the bunny! I hope this new piece continues the tradition.

Desert Sunset on a Bunny            11" x 14" / 28cm x 35.6cm

This scene is in Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA.

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Happy Easter!!!

Everybody knows Easter is all about a warm sunny day filled with flowers, bunnies, chocolate eggs and jelly beans. Maybe the kids will go searching in an Easter egg hunt or looking for an Easter basket hidden somewhere in the house. That's what Easter is all about, right?

Well, not exactly.

You see -- God loves us and wants to dwell with us, living the perfect life and attitudes He had in mind for us. But there's one big problem -- we don't do so good at living a perfect life according to His standards. In fact, we suck at it, and it ticks God off!

He loves us, but He can't put up with our disobedience -- another way of saying sin. We deserve to be thrown into hell because we make God miserable, as well as ourselves and everyone else. He's got a pretty high standard, and hey! God made us!! He makes the rules, and serving Him instead of ourselves is as good as it gets.

Thankfully, God gave us a way out. He used to require sacrifices as a way of making things right with Him, but then He had another idea: He sent His Son to be a sacrifice in place of the ones we came up with. His Son, of course, is Jesus Christ.

Jesus was crucified -- nailed to a cross as a blood sacrifice. He died, but He became alive again three days later. He took our sins/disobedient acts on Himself, thus cleaning up our acts once and for all, and by rising from the grave, He conquered the deaths that WE deserve.

Why did He do this? Because He loves us and didn't want any of us to languish forever in hell. All we have to do is: accept the notion that Jesus did this and that He is now our Lord as well as our Savior from hell. And follow Him. As imperfect as we are, God wants us to try, at least, to live a live of obedience to Him. In other words, this is NOT an anything goes kind of contract.

Is there a Plan B? What about those who live a good and moral life but who don't accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior?

Well, the Bible isn't that hopeful for people in that position. I can hope that Christ's death and resurrection is one method for being saved (although Jesus Himself said He is the ONLY way, and it's hard to see a Plan B in that).

So I'M sticking with Plan A, and I pray that anyone reading this will do likewise. Eternity is a long, LONG time!!!

Ohh... In case you really need a bunny, here's a picture of ours! 😃

New Painting of Joshua Tree National Park

At long last, I finally finished another painting of Joshua Tree National Park, CA: one of my favorite places on earth!

So far, the painting is untitled -- but I hope to remedy that situation soon. Size is 11" x 14" / 28cm x 36cm.

The hill-mountain in the background is one of the many formations in the Park that was never named. But I love all of the many peaks it has, and it seems to be my favorite mountain there. I've painted it before from various angles -- this version is the frontal-most I've done so far. More to come I suspect.

The rocks are made of gneiss ("nice") which often look like a HUGE dump truck came along and unloaded rocks and boulders into an enormous pile. Little large plant life occurs on these hills except for some grasses and such. This mountain has a few Joshua trees on the very top of the hill toward the right -- there must be some loose soil there for the JTs to take root and grow.

And, of course, I included a desert cottontail bunny-rabbit hiding in the shadows.

This is one of those scenes that, frankly, was kind of pain to create -- lots of detail. But in the end, I couldn't have done it any other way!

Mark Junge
www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com
 

Bunnies Bunnies Bunnie Bunnies Everywhere

Most people I know have learned by now that I love bunnies. (Guinea piggies, too!) We have a pet bunny, but I love the wild desert cottontail bunnies that live outside, too. They're so cute. And adorable.

I do put food out for them every evening before sundown, along with chicken scratch for the quail (and other assorted birdies). I also give the bunnies sliced carrots or apple and some romaine lettuce.

The wild bunnies sort of / kind of trust me, but only to a point. When I go outside to feed them, they gather around, but they keep a safe distance from me -- usually. Normally, they "freeze" until I walk past them, then -- supposedly when I can't see them -- THEN they may move a bit away from me.

On occasion, a bold bunny will show up and take food from my fingers, then run off with the goodie to eat it.

In one case, I was able to help a critter I called the notch-eared bunny. S/he had a long cactus thorn stuck in its forehead. There were times it would get into a "boxing match" with another bunny -- common among disagreeing rabbits -- and the bunny with the thorn would scream because its opponent often hit the thorn and made it hurt more.

But because this particular bunny came up to me to take a goodie, I was able to pull the thorn out!

This is the notch-eared bunny (no thorn) coming to get an apple goodie:

Sometimes it's fun to see how different bunnies interact with each other. I had missed an opportunity to get a picture of a blacktailed jackrabbit touching noses with a desert cottontail, but at least I did manage to take a pic of a baby (left) and adult (right) bunny together.

I'll leave with a portion of lyrics from an old (1949) song by Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Ya Wanna Buy a Bunny? about someone with a Shirley Temple voice who apparently didn't know that bunnies totally understand multiplication:
  

Bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies everywhere.
There's bunnies on the table and there's bunnies on the chair.
Bunnies on the sofa and there's bunnies on the floor.
And there's some new ones coming through the door. MORE!!

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

A Christmas Bunny

So -- what does one do if one:

• is an artist;
• loves Christmas;
• loves bunnies?  

Why...one paints a Christmas bunny! A lop-eared bunny, in this case.

A Christmas Bunny               14" x 11" / 36cm x 28cm

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

 

Pinnacle Peak

Pinnacle Peak is the title (and the view) of my latest painting. This special place is located northeast of Scottsdale, AZ. The dimensions are 18" x 24" / 46cm x 61cm.

For some reason, this painting was hard to photograph and make it look like the painting. Close, but no cee-gar.

Here is a detail that shows the bunnies I painted in:

I like the way the painting turned out, but I left myself some room to re-do it several times over -- which I suspect I will do, in time.

Sadly, although the Peak itself is still there with it's hiking trails (it's included in Pinnacle Peak State Park), the surrounding desert is gone. The virgin desert I depicted is now homes, roads, golf courses, a resort, and -- I believe -- a few shops and eateries.

Who knows -- maybe someone who lives near Pinnacle Peak will want paintings on their walls showing how the area used to look!


 

Wildlife Moments

My newest painting, Looking for Dinner -- Redtail Hawk, depicts what could become one of those nature documentary-types of moments... or it could be nothing at all!
 

Looking for Dinner -- Redtail Hawk               11" x 14"

In the air, we see a redtail hawk sailing effortlessly over the Mojave desert, making one last pass for tasty goodies before the sun sets -- coming close to what could his/her dinner. That cute little desert cottontail bunny-rabbit probably doesn't know about the hawk yet, but it's OK as long as it stays put. But if it hippity-hops into the open, it just may become a meal!

I won't reveal where the bunny is -- I hope you can see it. But I wanted to do a piece that tells a story -- as brief as it is. Prey-predator relationships. Life and (maybe) death in the surrealistic desert.

The setting is Joshua Tree National Park, with some of its namesake plants scattered about. The dominant tree is leaning toward the south -- unfortunately, Joshua trees have a bad habit of growing toward the sun. When they get bigger, they're off-balance, and in time will topple over. Not ALL JTs work out their self-destruction in this way, of course, but it isn't unusual to find places where all or most of the JTs have that characteristic lean.

The small mountain in the background has become one of my favorite geological features in the Park to paint. Most of the hills and formations in Joshua Tree National Park are unnamed officially -- often, the climbers come up with names that they share with each other, but the National Park Service never went around naming everything. So I just call this mountain "the peaks." I like all of the pointy projections for some reason. This paintings shows "the peaks" reasonably accurately (the peak on the far left is shorter than I've made it here).

The hawk is the sharpest item detail-wise and contrasts strongly with the lighted area of the peak behind it. It's also located at one of "golden mean" points of the composition. All this tends to make you look at it, although the JT in the foreground does some of that, too. The bunny, of course, blends into its background -- natural camouflage.

Wildlife moments. Kinda fun sometimes!

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

 
 

The Enchanted Realm

For desertophiles like me, most of the desert is an enchanted realm. But in this case, it's also the title I gave to my latest painting of Joshua Tree National Park in California.

The Enchanted Realm                                                                         18" x 24"

I was in this spot a couple of times (although I may not return -- the desert has a delicate layer of cryptobiotic soil -- "dirt" + microorganisms -- that is disturbed easily by hiking on it and that can take years to heal). The first time I was there, a neat cloud shadow spread across the land as you see it here.

I added some minor touches of my own, but I was so moved by the way nature painted this magical place, I felt it didn't need much help from me.

I use "The Vast Spaces of the Southwest" as my tagline. This scene is a perfect example of what I love about the desert and all of that distance that seems to touch infinity. It's a place where one can go and be in touch with the universe because we can see so much of it here. Not intergalactic space, obviously, but just -- big spaces and small us!

Bunnies, Bunnies Everywhere...

Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies, bunnies everywhere,
There's bunnies on the table and there's bunnies on the chair.
Bunnies on the sofa and there's bunnies on the floor,
And there's some new ones coming for the door ... MORE!


This was part of an old Spike Jones/Joanie Bartels song lamenting the ever-increasing numbers of bunnies that she was desperately trying to sell (or give away) before being totally overrun with bunnies.

Thankfully, it isn't that bad around here -- yet -- but The Wiffee and I were surprised to see a very young bunny scurrying around with the adult bunnies. The photo above shows the baby with one of the adults -- I'm glad I caught both in one shot: it makes it obvious the one on the left IS a baby. I fully expect I'll paint them that way, too.

Unfortunately, I wasn't ready with the camera when a potentially better picture presented itself: the two were leaning toward each other, sniffing and almost touching noses. ARRGGHH -- I MISSED IT!!

Oh, well. Maybe another day -- soon, before the baby grows up.

The Notched-Ear Bunny

A desert cottontail that frequents our small desert yard is one I've nicknamed The Notched-Ear Bunny.

You can't see the notch -- it's on the outside of his right ear which is hidden behind my hand as I offer him a piece of apple.

As you can see, he's a little bolder than most of the bunnies around here -- he'll cautiously come up to me to see if I have an apple piece to give him. He'll take it from my fingers, then run off a short ways to eat it as he keeps an eye on me. Just taking a picture of him was enough to make him run off, although he came right back.

In some ways, bunnies coming up to human beans isn't a good thing for bunnies to do, but it did work to his advantage on one occasion.

Some months ago, I noticed he had a cactus spine stuck in his head above his eye. Normally, bunnies just grab spines in their teeth and pull them out. But there was no way for him to get at this one. And when he got into scuffles with other bunnies (they sit up on their hindlegs and rapidly scratch at each others' faces with their forepaws), The Notched-Ear Bunny would actually scream out in pain. I'm sure it didn't feel good to have a paw brush down against a spine embedded in his head.

Finally one day, he came over looking for apple goodies, and I thought: now's my chance to remove the spine! When he came for the apple, I was able to reach over with my other hand and, after three tries, grabbed the spine and pulled it out. I suspect, in his own way, he appreciated what I did, and this simple act made me feel like a hero or somethin'! And he got his piece of apple when he returned the fourth time, sans spine.

If The Notched-Ear Bunny had never developed the habit of coming over to me for hand-held goodies, I could never have done this for him.

And he's still around, begging for apple goodies. Today, I gave him two. I thought he deserved them.

Bunny Prints

The snow is mostly gone now. But I couldn't resist showing another photo of footprints in the snow. A bunny's footprints.

Can't you just imagine the little critter hippity-hopping along in the snow, looking for some tasty goodies to eat? And looking totally cute doing it?

No Dumb Bunnies HERE!!!

I'm a bad boy. I put food out for the wild critters around here -- rabbit pellets for the bunnies and chicken scratch for the quail. There are certain places where I put each of these food items.

Of course, the critters don't always eat just "their" food, and that's especially true of the bunnies. Given the choice, they would rather eat scratch than pellets; however, if that was all I put out, the long-earred varmints wouldn't get much of a snack: they eat one kernal at a time, while the quail rapidly peck and eat the grains, managing to swallow between pecks. The quail would clear the area of scratch while the poor bunnies would get only a little.

But it's fun watching how the bunnies have changed their behavior over time. I put the scratch in an old Cool Whip container and toss the stuff one handful at a time. The bunnies used to run out to get it as soon as I threw it -- and got pelted with grain and corn, which probably doesn't feel very good.

Now, they wait on the side and run out between throws, and they'll run to an area that I've already thrown to. That, in turn, makes it easier for me to avoid hitting them with scratch.

These bunnies ain't dumb!

Bunny Art

If you've ever wondered where my avatar (with the desert cottontail bunny-rabbit) came from:

It was one of our yard bunnies. I put out small amounts of food for the wild critters -- not enough for them to live on so they're not dependent on us -- and I take pictures of them. Bunnies, Gambels quail, roadrunners, coyotes (I don't put food out for them, but feeding prey indirectly feeds the predators), hawks, whatever. I use these photos as reference material to paint critters, almost always in a different, more dramatic context.

Look carefully at the attached image, and you'll see my avatar bunny near the bottom, right of center in a large (48" x 60"/1.2m x 1.5m) painting of the southern California desert in the Palm Springs area.

A Bunny Named Bunny

Referring to my previous post, I could mention that Bunny #3 (named Bunny), was my favorite. I attended California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (aka Cal Poly Pomona), California, where I received both a Masters and a Bachelors degree in Microbiology (more about all this another time).

One of the classes I took in my undergrad years was Immunology and Serology. Part of the lab work was to inject cute little albino bunnies with stuff (nothing that would make the bunnies sick), then collect blood from them and go through an isolation and purification procedure to get the antibodies the bunnies made against the stuff. When the academic quarter was over, we had a choice of bringing the bunnies home (only catch -- we had to donate some of our own blood for the same class), or leave the bunnies there. If we left them, they ended up in one of the zoology classes' labs where, sadly, they would endure open-heart surgery and then would die. Needless to say, I took my team's bunny home.

Over a period of a few months or so, Bunny had the free run of an enclosed patio. She could hippity-hop around, hide, eat or do whatever she wanted.

The best part was when I called my girlfriend (now my wife). The phone was by a door that led out to the patio. So I'd sit on the doorstep, talking on the phone, often for an hour or more. Bunny would come over, go in betwen my legs and turn around, facing away from me. Then she'd settle down while I petted her until well after the phone call was finished. None of the other bunnies or the guinea pig seemed to appreciate the affection the way Bunny did.

One of Bunny's favorite places to be petted was just a little above her nose. I noticed that when a male and female are together, the male will lick and nibble the female there, and the female seemed to be in bunny heaven when he did.

Bunnies also like being petted and rubbed around the base of the ears. So--if you have a bunny or the next time you're in a bunny's company, consider letting it know how cute you think it is by petting it in those places.

More About Bunnies

My favorite pets of all time have been: guess what? BUNNIES!!!

Bunnies are low-maintenance pets. They can be paper-trained, believe it or not. We've had bunnies that have had the free run of the rooms we kept them in and really didn't have to clean up much after them. They always had a cage on the floor where we kept their water bottles and food, and those little critters "did their business" in the cages. So the cages needed cleaning every day, of course, but the room itself was pretty much OK, except when the bunnies were shedding.

I was never creative when it came to naming them. One pair was a brother and sister--they were simply "Girl Bunny" and "Boy Bunny." The third and fourth (we didn't have them at the same time) were both named "Bunny." Our last critter was the only lop-earred rabbit we had, and it came with a name: "Maggie." The previous owner thought it was a female, until a trip to a veterinarian uncovered the truth: "she" was a "he"! But the name stuck.

We once had a guinea pig, too, in between bunnies. They're cute,too. They squeak and whistle and scurry around in their cages. And they always have this expression like they're constantly startled. Cute. Very cute.

Some day we'll probably get another bunny (or guinea pig). But for now, we're too busy to take on the responsibility of having a pet. And we do have the wild bunnies outside. They won't let us pick them up or pet them, of course. But they're still cute!

Those Wascally Wabbits

...or those cute little bunnies, as I'm more apt to say.

I normally don't take pictures of critters with my digital camera--the autofocus feature makes it respond much too slowly for anything that's not inclined to sit still for me. But sometimes I get lucky, as the picture to the right proves.

I must confess to my sins, however. I do actually attract critters like bunnies to our area, partly because it makes me feel good and mostly because I try to take pictures of them to use in paintings. What is my sin, you may ask? I have containers of water for them, and I put out rabbit pellets for the bunnies and chicken scratch for the Gambels quail (actually, bunnies like the scratch, too!) More on the quail later.

Living in a desert region where habitat is sadly disappearing, I feel like I'm giving the critters a helping hand. On the other hand, I'm concerned I may be enabling them to reproduce beyond the region's ability to support them without help. Feeding wild mammals can be an especially bad idea, particularly when the mammals can produce LOTS of offspring.

Of course, we're indirectly feeding the predators, too, since we're supporting the prey. But the predators had a hard time catching the prey around here due to all the wickedly-thorny cholla cactus that grows around here. Still, we have witnessed "wildlife moments" when we happen to look out a window just in time to see a hawk catch and eat a dove or we see a roadrunner with a lizard or quail chick in its beak.

BTW: those roadrunner cartoons where coyote tries to lure the bird with a pile of birdseed while coyote attempts to drop a boulder or dynamite or something equally lethal on the poor roadrunner? IT AIN'T LIKE THAT!! Roadrunners are carnivorous, not seed-ivorous! And since they don't have talons or hooked beaks like hawks and eagles, they have to tear up the meat by whipping their prey against rocks. That's really hard to watch when their prey is a cute "fuzzball" quail chick, but it's all part of how nature works.

Welcome!

Ahh...so you've stumbled across my blog ... or perhaps you were actually searching for me by name and discovered me here! Either way, thanks for checking in on me.

As the above blurb mentions, I'm an artist who paints landscapes of the West. I especially love the Southwestern deserts -- these are places that can only be described as surreal and infinite, with lots and LOTS of space, grotesque plantlife and rugged, primeval geological features. Painting the deserts helps fill my need to paint surrealism (my favorite style of art) while celebrating the stark beauty of some very special places. You can see examples of my paintings and my artistic influences on my Website: http://www.southwestspaces.com. I frequently make changes to my site -- please visit often. I expect to change it from a mere online portfolio to a virtual gallery where you can acquire works simply by clicking on the appropriate buttons.

As for my comment about bunnies: I live in the California desert, and we have lots of desert cottontail rabbits around here. They often make their way into paintings, and I've created the above bunny-featured avatar that I use on a number of other sites. Personally, I think bunnies are cute. A pain, sometimes -- they eat everything -- but they're cute.