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
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.
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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
