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.
A couple of paintings appropriate for the season!
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| Mojave Snow 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
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| A Colorado Christmas 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
I hope you enjoy these images and that you have a wonderful holiday season!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
It's almost Thanksgiving, and I actually managed to finish a couple of Thanksgiving paintings in time for the holiday. The still life was one I started many years ago and set aside to finish...someday! 😃 The other piece, complete with church and turkeys, is a totally recent artwork.
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| Thanksgiving 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
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| The Blessings of Thanksgiving 14" x 11" / 35.6cm x 27.9cm |
I hope you and yours have a lot to be thankful for and that you'll have a truly blessed Thanksgiving!!
Mark Junge
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). 😃
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| Hi, Bunny! Hi, Pumpkin 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm |
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| A Walk in the Moonlight 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm |
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| The Morning After 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm |
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| Untitled (so far) 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm |
Enjoy the season! It's moving through fast!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
For a lo-o-n-n-g-g time, I've loved things Polynesian. But now I've going to commit an act of sacrilege. Maybe even heresy! 😮
Paul Gauguin was an artist who lived and painted in Tahiti. He focused on the vahines there more than, say, landscapes. Fine. Except -- I never got into the style he preferred. In short, I'm not a Paul Gauguin fan!!
I think he had the skills to work in a more academic way, although I could be wrong. A detail below from one of his paintings, Two Tahitian Women (1899) is actually kind of nice, and it appears he was capable of rendering faces.
The painting as a whole, however, just doesn't work for me. The classical realism approach doesn't call as much attention to itself as the subject and workings do, and if handled right, can elicit powerful emotional responses. That's where MY interests lie.
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| Two Tahitian Women Paul Gauguin,1899-detail |
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| Two Tahitian Women Paul Gauguin |
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| A Girl Defending Herself Against Eros William Adolphe Bouguereau,1880 |
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
The desert and the fairy. Well, not at the same time -- everyone knows fairies lives in lush green landscapes, not arid, hot deserts!! (Although I did once paint a desert fairy cozying up to a bunny!)
First, the desert. This is Desert Visions, a scene from Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA. It's 11" x 14" / 28cm x 35.6cm:
As for the fairy, well, I started on her months ago and then set her aside to start and finish some other paintings. Then I decided it was time to finish her!
So many paintings to do, so little time!! 'Bye for now -- talk with you next time!! Stay cool!!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
"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.
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| Desert Sunset on a Bunny 11" x 14" / 28cm x 35.6cm |
This scene is in Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA.
Mark Junge
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
April has been sort of an interesting month, art-wise. We took a trip to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona (I needed to see cactus!) and a quick daytrip to nearby Joshua Tree National Park. We had hoped to see lots of flowers, but there weren't very many.
I finished a painting for a friend who wanted an image of herself as the Queen of Blood, a top-tier vampire in a spooky scene. I also made a quick drawing of an allosaurus, a Jurassic-period carnivorous dinosaur. I identify with being a dino, while the friend sees herself as the Queen of Blood!!
I think the Queen of Blood isn't too scary, but if you're sensitive to ghoulish/Halloweenish scenes, you may not want to look beyond the Allosaurus drawing.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Allosaurus
The Queen of Blood
Totem and Turkey Vulture is the tentative title of my latest painting.
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
Tomorrow night is Halloween!! While I don't go overboard with it, I do enjoy the season and reflect on the sights and experiences I had as a kid on Halloween.
Appropriately enough, I did manage to finish a couple of paintings with a Halloween theme. (If I ever complete the book I have in mind filled with end-of-the-year visions, these two will be in it!)
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| Ghosts 14" x 11" / 36cm x 28cm |
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| The Morning After 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm |
I enjoy painting seasonal images like this when the season is going on, but it's hard to get as much done as I'd like in the time that I have. I need to work on seasonal paintings when it's not the season!
So I hope you have/had a fun Halloween and then you began to reflect on the next holiday -- Thanksgiving!
Mark Junge
Autumnal equinox finally arrived today (although the day's almost over as I write this). Autumn is when my world turns into a fantasy land -- fall colors, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (Once Christmas ends, the magic seems to end, too, and the time that follows is kind of a downer).
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| View of La Crescenza Claude Lorraine Looks like the beginnings of fall in Rome |
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| Nutting Thomas Moran |
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| Autumn on the Wissahickon Thomas Moran |
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| Autumn Thomas Moran |
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| The Autumnal Woods Thomas Moran |
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| Autumn Frederick Edwin Church |
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| Autumn Woods Albert Bierstadt |
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| Cresheim Glen, Wissahickon, Autumn Thomas Moran |
If you've been following me for any length of time, you may have noticed The Vast Spaces of the Southwest is my logo or tagline. And now it's also the title of my latest painting!
I haven't decided if I want to enter this in a local exhibition or not. The exhibition is about art that was inspired by the national park, and my painting certainly was!
But I also promised myself: no more art shows, galleries, exhibitions/competitions, stuff like that. So: we'll see.
Enjoy, and thank you for your support!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Advancing Time is my latest (surrealism) painting. It's essentially a redo of the very first serious painting I did: men seemingly running from a clock that is chasing them as the sun goes down. The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
What does it mean?? Not really sure -- I'm sure something bad is in those runners' futures if/when the clock catches up with them. Maybe it has something to do with our futures as well.
I'll admit I'm concerned about our future and the future of our country. Perhaps the painting is simply an expression of concerns I have and the ominous evil just beyond the horizon. Something's coming, and it ain't good.
But for now, enjoy the time we have, and look for the beauty in our lives.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
I've been in the mood for some surrealism lately. So I'm holding back a little on making desert landscape paintings and I'm doing some small surrealism works!
The latest piece -- The Visit -- combines surrealism and a bit of desert landscape! 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
Even though I paint surrealism, I never try to explain what the images mean, usually because I don't know what they mean. In this case, I wanted a scene of a human walking through an otherworldly desert, similar to something one might see in a dream.
In fact, dream imagery is critical to my way of working -- dreams that might be a little disturbing, but the scenes are not nightmarish. This is the Salvador Dali-ish world I love to create. Some modern-day surrealism is too pretty, or too much a mere assemblage of seemingly unrelated objects thrown together in a view, or scary/ugly monstrous animals or mutated humans. Not my thing at all!
So is this female on a vision quest? Is she lost? Dream-walking? Heading into an unknown future, good or bad (as we all must)? Don't know!
All I know is: there's something freeing to me about doing these kinds of paintings. Let's face it -- I'm a surreal kind of guy. AND PROUD OF IT!!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Dry Times refers to the droughts we in the West often get stuck with. It is also the title of my latest painting depicting some dry times in Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA.
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| Dry Times 18" x 24" / 46cm x 61cm |
This year, some of the Joshua trees did bloom -- we had some rain, and it stayed pretty cool - cold most of the winter -- just the way JTs like it! Also, Joshua trees bloom earlier than the annuals and shrubs do, so it would be unusual to see flowers on the trees AND all over the desert floor at the same time. It does happen, but things have to be just right -- and this year, they weren't.
So I painted the scene pretty much as it appeared the day I last visited there. We can see the green creosote bushes, the gray blackbrush, the pale yellow Indian ricegrass and the reddish-brown seedpods of wild buckwheat.
But no wildflowers! 😢
Well, I love the desert whether springtime color appears or not. But the color sure would make it prettier!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
As much as I love the desert, sometimes I get romanticized images of Polynesian islands in my head.
When we took a trip to the Hawaiian Islands in October 2019, I had hoped to see places that resembled the pictures I have in my brain, but we never did find places like that on our too-brief trip.
So I've taken to painting real-life scenes but with a certain, uh, embellishment! 😃
Kaua'i Shores 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm
The foundation of this piece is Tunnels Beach (aka Makua Beach) is northern Kaua'i in the Hawaiian Islands. The plant life is imaginary but is based on real plants that grow on Kaua'i, but not necessarily this close to the ocean. The only animal I depicted is the Hawaiian honeycreeper, the red bird sitting on the tree fern -- difficult to paint, since it's VERY small on the painting!
More Polynesian 🌴🌴🌴paintings to come, but now it's back to the desert 🌵🌵🌵 in the studio🎨!!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
The latest painting -- Firerock, 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm.
