Three New Desert Paintings!

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.

A Desert Stroll

Eagle's Nest

Arizona Desert

Can you tell? I LOVE the desert!! I think I needed to see saguaro and organ pipe cacti in their natural settings. (Eagle's Nest is a scene in local Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA). I love Joshua trees and our Mojave desert, too, but I think I needed to be immersed in the Sonoran desert of Arizona for more inspiration.

I'd say it worked!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Dry Times

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.

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