A View of San Gorgonio

 Finally!! I finished a painting that I've been working on for months. Not that it was a hard painting to do, I just didn't have the time or energy to pour myself into it the way I used to. Must be all part of getting old, I guess.

Anyway, here is San Gorgonio. This is a view of one of the two mountain ranges that make this area a desert. I imagined the scene to appear the way the town of Yucca Valley may have looked before the town existed.

 
I always loved the way the Mojave Desert looks in the spring -- snow on the mountains (not here, so we don't have to deal with it!), and wildflowers blooming on the lowlands. ("Low" is relative -- we're at 3,000 feet elevation). In a place with little color, wildflowers are always a welcome sight.

And, of course, one of my favorite things about seeing and living in the desert is all that open space -- "the vast spaces of the Southwest," as my tagline reads. I'm not claustrophobic, but for some reason, all that space and distance means so much to me. It's almost a touch of the infinite!

Enjoy, and I hope to talk with you again soon.

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

San Gorgonio

 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