An Ancient Lake

You're standing in a lake bed. No, really -- you are! A dry lake bed, that is, in the desert.

This is Lake Cahuilla ("cah-ooo-EE-yah"), an ancient lake that came and went depending on whatever direction the Colorado River "decided" to flow. The lake bed exists in the desert east of Palm Springs. This painting was one of the few commissions I've done in my career. The clients live close to this site but requested a painting of how it looked at that time because developers were planning on home and golf course construction out there. The development, Andalusia, now fills part of the area you see here.

One feature of the scene that was important to the clients was the waterline that marked Coral Mountain, the mass in the center of the painting. I'll have to admit: the waterline fascinates me. It appears especially dark after significant rainfall drenches the rocks. I noticed that the waterline was darker even than the shadows of the crevices among the rocks.

The early Spanish explorers never got to taste the water of Lake Cahuilla. Apparently, the lake water was gone by 1600AD. But the waterline is still visible 400 years later, a remnant of a time when a precious desert resource -- water -- made life a little easier for the native residents of an otherwise dry place.

Isn't She Cute?

Isn't she cute? Our guinea pig, that is. I absolutely can't resist cuteness like this.

I may have to do a painting of her some day.

Ooooo!!! SO cute!

A Painter in the Window

The next two Fridays and Saturdays (2/20,2/21 and 2/27,2/28), I'll be painting in the gallery instead of in my studio!

It'll be different and I'm a little nervous about it since I'm so used to being all by myself, a hermit in a cloistered environment, when I paint. But the gallery owner believes I'll be somewhat of a draw. Lots of people think art is some mysterious, spiritual process (and, of course, it IS!), and so are utterly fascinated when they see it being done before their eyes.

So those days, from 11:00am to 4:00pm (or 1100 to 1600 hours, if you prefer), I'll be at the gallery painting away by a window where passersby can see me. The owner also sent about 500 postcards promoting the event, and people have already been responding to his mailings.

If you're interested in coming by, please visit the gallery Website for information about finding the gallery: http://www.christophermorgangalleries.com/.

And, of course, DON'T forget to visit MY Website from time to time: http://www.southwestspaces.com/ or http://www.desert-paintings.com/.

Slightly Obsessed

Back in the 1970's, I ran into a friend at one of my L.A. hangouts. I hadn't seen her for a while, so we caught up on what we've been doing.

She mentioned she was now working for a PR firm that handled some of the major rock musicians of the time. (She named several artists they worked with; the only one I remember offhand is the group, Fleetwood Mac).

I said something like: "Wow! It must be fun getting to meet all of those big-name people, huh?"

She replied: "Well, not really. They're actually kind of boring." She went on to explain that most of them don't seem to know very much, EXCEPT if you get on the topic of music. Then they really know their stuff. Outside of that, they may have opinions about life, but they weren't that knowledgeable in depth about issues, politics or other important events. It was as though all of their brain cells were devoted to their music or, maybe, the music business in general.

Today, I wonder if that's just the way it has to be if one wants to make a living in the arts. It's easy to get distracted by things that are going on around us. Distractions kill art -- making a painting involves time plus whatever level of skill the artist has developed to that point. Anything else we do is at the expense of making art.

A gallery owner in Scottsdale, AZ once told me that all of the financially successful artists he knows do nothing but make art -- no hobbies, no other outside interests. They just paint 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week.

I'm not quite at that point yet, but art is pretty much all I do anymore. I'm slightly obsessed with art -- making it, reading about it or seeing it in books, museums or galleries. Apparently, that's what it takes to make it in this business.

As a line goes from one of my favorite movies, A Dog of Flanders: "To be an artist, one must give up everything. EVERYthing." It seems to be true.

Joshua Tree National Park in the Fall

Ahhh...fall in the Mojave Desert, with electric reds, oranges and yellows. Well, maybe not so electric. In fact, maybe those colors are REALLY subtle.

But they are there: the rusty-red seedheads of wild buckwheat, the (somewhat) orange dormant shrubs and the yellowish flowers of autumn-blooming rabbitbrush. Oh, yes, and the reddish tail of the redtail hawk. (Look carefully--the hawk is in flight in front of the Joshua tree on the left).

Another fact of life in this part of America -- you may have noticed that the Joshua trees in this painting seem to have a slight tilt to the left, specifically toward the South. Joshua trees have an unfortunate habit of growing toward the sun. For small, herbaceous plants, that wouldn't be a bad thing, but when you're a heavy Joshua tree, you don't really want to do that. As the tree grows, it becomes off-balance, causing the tree to lean more and more southerly until it finally topples over.

That's life in the Mojave desert. The seasons change, the subtle colors of fall come and go, and Joshua trees fall over from the weight of their own asymmetry as they reach for the sun.

Is there anything we can learn from this?

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...

Agathla

Agathla (a-GOTH-la) is a formation that stands in the southern entrance to Monument Valley in northeastern Arizona. The name is Najavo for "The place of the scraping of the hides."* Apparently, sheep are sometimes shorn here. (By the way, the name the Navajo call themselves is Diné (dee-NEH), which means "The People").

I love Monument Valley. I think the Diné are fortunate indeed to live in a place with such a spiritual presence. The People have a special connection with the land, and when you're in areas like this, it's easy to understand why.

This painting is a portrait of Agathla. It had been raining on and off that day. I dramatized the lighting somewhat to give the formation a sense that it's alive. The size is 8" x 10"/20cm x 25cm.

*Monument Valley: The Story Behind the Scenery, KC Publications (1992), p.18