Saint Jacinto's Spring

My latest painting:

Primavera de San Jacinto (Saint Jacinto's Spring)                            20" x 24"

It's springtime in the desert! Mt. San Jacinto is west of Palm Springs, CA and is one of two mountain ranges that makes the desert what is is by blocking most rain clouds that arrive from the west.

This is the north-facing side of the mountain. I always loved the abrupt rising of the mountain from the flat plain, the result of earthquake activity that lifted this hunk of earth up into the air. The other side of "San Jac" has the rolling foothills that one expects with mountains, and also features green grass following the winter rains.

But this side receives little rain, and the vegetation shows it.

Still, the view takes on a rugged beauty all its own. This is the beginning of the California desert, and my own little desert world begins right here.

Welcome to Saint Jacinto's spring!

Inspirational Desert Paintings

It seems that I either haven't had much time for painting lately, and/or I've just been too tired. I started a desert painting that is taking forever to get done, and I had hoped to start and finish at least two, maybe three, smaller Halloween-themed artworks before the day actually arrives. I haven't even begun those pieces yet!

As an alternative, I'll post an image of a painting by an artist buddy, P.A. Nisbet. Some of his paintings appeared in an art magazine back in 1987, and they had a profound impact on me and the direction I was to take in my own art.

Magic Kingdom        P.A. Nisbet      oil/canvas       36" x 48"

This painting is one of those things that changed my live forever. It's hard for me to put my finger on it, but Magic Kingdom has a mysterious, spiritual quality to it that I hope I capture in my own paintings. However, when I'M the one making the art, I have to depend on others to tell me if I succeeded in capturing the feeling that elevates an image to more than just an illustration.

The area depicted in Magic Kingdom is the Pinacate region of Sonora, Mexico. Some of southern Arizona looks much like this. I'd love to visit this place, but a local naturalist wrote an article about the illegal drug activities that go on there and the efforts that the police make in trying to bring it under control. I wouldn't feel safe there, but maybe one day, Pinacate will once again return to being a place of sublime beauty and peace.

To see more of this artist's work, click here.

Drawing the Desert

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to make some small colored-pencil drawings that I could sell for a much lower price than my paintings. At this point, I've made a little over 20 drawings, and hopefully I can do a few more before Saturday. I'll be attending a local craft fair, which will be somewhat of a marketing test for the drawings. We'll see if selling lots of inexpensive drawings is more do-able than selling a few, expensive paintings.

Here are a few examples of what I've been up to. Each is 8" x 10" (20cm x 25cm) sketched on colored paper. None are titled or framed.

New Painting: "Silver Ledge"

I FINALLY finished a new painting that I was frantically working on to enter in an exhibit. I still gave the piece all of the TLC it deserved, but I think I've been painting more than I've been sleeping!

Silver Ledge, 18" x 24"

Silver Ledge is the name of the mine -- or what's left of it -- that sits a little south of Silverton, Colorado along the Million Dollar Highway (aka Hwy. 550). Behind the structures lies the sprawling Chattanooga Valley which used to hold the small town of Chattanooga (not to be confused with the one in Tennessee!). The town was destroyed in the late 19th century, but I haven't found a definitive reason for how that happened: it was either by avalanche, flood or fire. In any case, the town was never rebuilt and only a few buildings remain there today -- none visible from this vantage point.

Far in the distance sits Bear Mountain. Much of the region displayed the glorious golden yellows of fall aspen, but this view seemed to show few aspen and lots of Colorado blue spruce.

The Silverton area was known for producing lots of mines, many of them silver. But the Silver Ledge's primary commodity was tungsten. It also extracted smaller amounts of gold, silver, lead and zinc.

The painting shows how the mine looked the last time I was there -- September, 1997. I understand efforts were being made in 2010 by a preservation group to prevent further deterioration of the minehead and also to cleanup the tailings which were leaching lead, zinc and copper into Mineral Creek (which runs below the embankment on the left and off into the Valley).

I've been wanting to paint this image for almost seventeen years -- and I've finally done it! It isn't the desert, but the site is in southwestern Colorado and we can see lots of distance from this spot. So it fits my tagline which you would find on my website and on my business cards: The Vast Spaces of the Southwest!

More Inspiration!

As a landscape painter, I love it when I stumble across artworks that I've never seen before that manage to take my breath away once I "discover" them.

Curescanti Needle, Colorado
George Frederick Bensell, ca. 1875

This is one such painting. I had Googled images of Colorado paintings, and this is one of the items that came up. Curescanti Needle is located in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (one of the country's National Parks) near Montrose, Colorado. I suspect the artist took some liberties with how the place actually looked, but some 19th century painters did that -- they were more interested in capturing the mood of a place than re-creating every rock and tree that exists.

OK, it isn't a desert painting, but I still love it, and I DO paint Colorado scenes on occasion (in fact, I'm working on a Colorado painting now). The size is 66" x 48"/168cm x 122cm and is in a private collection. Lucky peeps!!

Very inspiring!!

Mojave Nocturne

Mojave Nocturne is the latest painting in my ongoing (never-ending?) series of desert paintings. The size is 14" x 11" / 35cm x 28cm, acrylic on panel:

 

It depicts Joshua Tree National Park at night as a full moon rises and shines through the clouds. I've always loved being in the desert under a full moon: the bare ground lights up more than grass or shrub-covered landscapes do, and the place takes on a special magic that must be experienced. And the Joshua trees appear as apparitions from a Halloween night, with many ghostly fingers and arms reaching out to grab you!

Still, in spite of those thoughts, the desert by moonlight isn't at all scary to me (unless one were to step on a rattlesnake in the darkness, but there are no snakes in this painting). The moon, the glowing clouds (when present) and the shapes against a starry sky have a beauty all their own.

Can you tell I love the desert?

Confusers

Sometimes I think "confuser" is a more accurate name for this gizmo than "computer."

I was having some problems with the thing and was concerned something really terrible happened -- hard drive crash or something -- and while most of my stuff is backed up, not ALL of it was.

So I took the confuser to a confuser repair place. The technician found the dial-up/fax modem (which I never used) was bad and removed it. He also uninstalled some extra anti-virus software which, I think, came with the confuser when I bought it in 2008.

Everything seemed fine, although I had a bit of a scare yesterday -- the confuser acted up again, just as it did before I took it in. I called the guy who suggested trying a different power supply or electrical outlet. I had already unplugged an external hard drive with a transformer from the surge-protected power strip I have everything plugged into. Guess what? The problem hasn't returned!

So -- either the surge protector is getting too old (and it IS old!), and/or the transformer for the external drive really was interrupting the power supply to the confuser itself.

Well, at least things seem OK for now. I'll plug the external drive into another outlet, and I may unplug the printers from the surge protector, too. And maybe buy another surge protector for the confuser.

And then maybe I can try to get back on schedule with blogging again!