A Winter Painting and a Christmas Painting!

 A couple of paintings appropriate for the season!

Mojave Snow                   8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm

A Colorado Christmas    8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm

One shows the aftereffects of a rare snowstorm in the Mojave desert of Joshua Tree National Park; the other is a Christmas scene in a home somewhere in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. (The mountain outside the window and in the painting over the fireplace are the same mountain: Mt. Sneffels, my favorite Colorado Mountain to paint!)

I hope you enjoy these images and that you have a wonderful holiday season!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

 

Starting the New Year

 Wow -- another year has slipped by us and is well underway!! Happy 2022!!

MY happy part of the new year will be delayed for a while -- The Wiffee and I both came down with Covid just before New Year's Day. Nothing all that serious (so far), mostly just fevers, coughing and being tired. But unless something goes really wrong, I expect by February we'll be our usual sassy selves.

Painting has pretty much ground to a halt for now, but at least I can share my last artwork from 2021. I hope you'll like it.

Meanwhile, thank you for your support!

A Light in the Forest                           10" x 08" / 25cm x 20cm

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Desert Snow

One normally does not put "desert" and "snow" in the same sentence. Deserts are thought of as hot, dry places...snow is the last thing you'd expect to find out there.

But it does happen -- in the true deserts, and in places that are not deserts but that look desert-y.

The Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs, CO is a place that looks desert-y. And it typically snows there in greater or lesser amounts.

I posted on Facebook the following image of a painting I did years ago showing the Garden of the Gods in the snow:

A Snowy Thanksgiving                             22" x 28"

(I should mention the image was scanned from a 35mm slide. Sorry about the huge copyright symbol!)

Meanwhile, an artist friend from Oregon -- one of the artists I met years ago at an art show -- is now teaching painting classes in Wickenburg, AZ. He has included gallery space, mostly for his own artwork, but then he saw A Snowy Thanksgiving. He loves it and asked me to exhibit it, along with 5-6 others (all with snow) in his gallery. The gallery would have just his and my art.

I have seen other red rock areas with snow (i.e., Bryce Canyon National Park) in addition to Garden of the Gods. And the Mojave desert sometimes gets snow, and -- more rarely -- even the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona gets snow on occasion (which disappears quickly afterwards).

So -- we'll see what I come up with in the months ahead. The gallery opens in October, and the grand opening is in November. I'll let you know exactly where and when things will be happening.

I'll continue to be in touch, and thank you for your support!

Mark Junge
www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com
www.FineArtAmerica (for prints) 

The Giver of Life

The Giver of Life is the title of my latest painting. The title refers to the rains that grace our desert area every so often -- and with the rain comes life.

Giver of Life                           30" x 40"

The view is of Mount San Jacinto (west of Palms Springs, CA) as seen from across the Banning Pass in an area called the Devil's Garden, so named for containing a forest of barrel and cholla cactus. (Many of the cacti are gone -- in the 1920s, Los Angeles people came, dug out many of the barrels and transplanted them in their yards, only to die soon thereafter; plus, wildfires have destroyed many specimens).

I have seen the mountain look just like this after a storm, except the peak was often obscured by clouds. I exposed the peak, highlighting the brilliant white snow at the top.

To the left, we see a red tail hawk on the wing, coming out after the rains and looking for tasty goodies to eat.

The desert can be a spectacular place to be if you are there at the right time. My goal is to capture those special times.

(By the way, my website URLs are SouthwestSpaces.com and MarkJunge.com). ☺
 

Wadda Difference a Week Makes

Last week it was short-sleeve weather, albeit a bit on the cool side.

This week -- rain and snow in the high desert! All week!

The El Niño thing has clearly arrived. In some ways, it's good -- California really needs the rain. Unfortunately, the rain comes all at once, and sometimes it's a bit much to deal with.

And as much as I hate being in the snow, I'll have to admit it is pretty -- and makes for fun paintings.

The photo shows the distant hills of Joshua Tree National Park as seen across the valley in our little town. I could see using the hills (without the buildings in the foreground) in some dramatic desert scenes, complete with snow-covered Joshua trees as they sleep through the winter storms.

Here We Go Again!

It's been snowing on and off today! It was warm around here the last week or so -- note the poor creosote bush flower that thought is was spring, and now it's blowing around in snow-laden wind, fading rapidly.

At least with this rain-snow mix and the rains (and snow) we got in December, this may turn out to be a good wildflower season. But I still don't care much for seeing snow -- it's pretty and all that. However, we got our fill of it in Colorado!

Brrr-r-r-r-r...

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?

ANOTHER Future Painting

At least the storm has moved on, I've been taking lots of pictures, and I could see some paintings coming out of this.

(But I STILL think snow belongs in Colorado where we lived in the '90's, NOT in southern California!)

More Snow

Good grief!!! We knew it snows in the Mojave desert. But we moved from Colorado, in part, to get away from THIS much snow!

It started snowing in the early morning hours, it's snowed all day, and it won't stop until early tomorrow morning.

At least snow IS pretty. It's just a pain if you have to go out in it. I was outside today, knocking snow off of tree and bush branches before the weight of the snow could break them.

The picture on the right shows a Joshua tree with its north-facing side totally coated with snow. (Compare with the photo from Monday, 15 December). The lumpy snow on the ground is covering a forest of cholla cactus. The second picture is of a couple of house sparrows who don't seem to be bothered by the weather around them.