An Artist -- and a Hermit!!

 I'm an artist...and a hermit!!

Most artists will say creating objects is a part of their nature. It's virtually a necessity, and I get that totally.

But a hermit? Well, some artists are outgoing and gregarious, and some are just the opposite.

I'd say I've withdrawn from the social life partly because I just never learned how to fit in that way. But much of it has to do with not wanted to get hurt by people anymore.

Granted -- no one likes to get hurt. But I'm a bipolar dinosaur -- not severely, praise God, but the depression that comes with it makes hurt a devastating event. And it doesn't always take much.

For example, I'm a Christian who has had friends of both sexes -- including females when they were single. But once they get married, they dropped me like a bag of dirt. And I never understood why -- they never even explained it to me! To "avoid all appearances of evil?" Isn't that a rather extreme interpretation of Scripture?

Well, anyway, it's been an ongoing source of hurt for me -- losing friends just because someone got married.

I actually looked up the topic, and this article seems to take a well-balanced take on the issue. Maybe all but the most conservative (or Pharisee-ish) Christians might see some value in it.

There are other, as I tend to say, "Pharisee-ish" positions I've seen that are incredibly irritating to me, including stands on scientific topics by people who admit they never did well in science classes. (Surprise, surprise!!) Some Christians get addicted to certain interpretations of the Bible that go well beyond any detail the Bible provides.

So I got into the habit of avoiding people and especially Christians. It wasn't a conscious decision when I thought: "I think starting today, I'm going to be a hermit." It just happened, although it does seem to raise the ire of Christians -- we're not supposed to be "loner Christians". I hear the excuses about how I should look past the misguided, sinful efforts of the sheep who come to church looking for...who knows what.

And I always say -- "If I don't have an excuse, neither does the church."

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Two Desert Paintings!

Two new desert paintings!

The first is one I made while my vision was foggy last month (from films that developed on the lens implants I received after my cataract surgery three years ago). I was able to tweak the painting a bit after I got the laser treatment to remove the films, but there were still things I just couldn't see while the world was blurry -- such as the brush marks and ridges of paint that took away from the smooth surfaces I prefer on my paintings. Oh, well. I guess I can live with it. Below are the images of the entire painting plus a detail showing the two bunnies:

In the Arizona Sun................... 24"/45.7cm x 61cm

Detail -- two desert cottontail bunnies!

Then, after my vision was cleared up, I started and finished a smaller painting showing the entrance to the Alabama Hills region at Lone Pine, CA. You've undoubtedly seen views of this magnificent area in movies -- Clint Eastwood's Joe Kidd and Kevin Bacon's Tremors come to mind -- with the east face of the mighty and rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range in the background and "rock piles" littering the desert floor. Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48 states, is the cluster of points to the right of center.

As one enters this special place, a lone cottonwood tree appears to the north of the road among one of the rock piles. We happened to see it in early November, and the golden yellow made it a star shining in a blue and brown vista! So this was what I painted:

Lone Cottonwood in Lone Pine....... 8"x10"/20cm x 25cm

So that's it for now!! More paintings are on the way -- thanks for reading this, and thank you for your support!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Another Joshua Tree National Park Painting!

 Yet another painting of Joshua Tree National Park!!

Rocks 'n' Clouds             08" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm

Rocks 'n' Clouds showcases some hills made of gneiss (pronounced "nice"), a type of rock found everywhere in the local Mojave Desert. These hills happen to be in Joshua Tree National Park, a place that -- as everyone knows -- is one of my favorite places on earth.

I love messing around with things like dramatic lighting and cloud shadows, the latter which I've done here. In fact, I put a lot of effort into painting clouds -- I suspect I'm really a skyscape painter with some desert thrown in! 😃

So -- I'm tempted to take a break and to start getting into an autumn mindset. I love fall and the beginnings of all the neat and fun holidays that follow! But -- there's lots to do yet in whatever time I have left in this life, so-o-o -- the break will need to be a short one. 😕.

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

San Gorgonio

 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.

🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵

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

Paul Gauguin

For a lo-o-n-n-g-g time, I've loved things Polynesian. But now I've going to commit an act of sacrilege. Maybe even heresy! 😮

Paul Gauguin was an artist who lived and painted in Tahiti. He focused on the vahines there more than, say, landscapes. Fine. Except -- I never got into the style he preferred. In short, I'm not a Paul Gauguin fan!!

I think he had the skills to work in a more academic way, although I could be wrong. A detail below from one of his paintings, Two Tahitian Women (1899) is actually kind of nice, and it appears he was capable of rendering faces.

The painting as a whole, however, just doesn't work for me. The classical realism approach doesn't call as much attention to itself as the subject and workings do, and if handled right, can elicit powerful emotional responses. That's where MY interests lie.

Two Tahitian Women       Paul Gauguin,1899-detail

Two Tahitian Women         Paul Gauguin

Images like the one below speak to me much more powerfully:

A Girl Defending Herself Against Eros
William Adolphe Bouguereau,1880

Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

 

For a Future Painting of Glen Eyrie, Colorado

 I saw the following painting by my art hero, Thomas Moran, when we lived in Colorado Springs, CO during the '90s:

The title is Glen Eyrie, Garden of the Gods. These are two separate and adjacent properties in Colorado Springs, and I always wanted to do a painting like this.

Trouble is: Glen Eyrie is privately owned by the Navigators, a Christian parachurch organization and book publisher. I never had a chance to go there looking for the site that Moran painted.

Over the years, I've been looking online for photos that might help me make a similar painting to Moran's. And I FINALLY found it on Google Maps!!

Here is the pic:

As you can see, it appears to be close to the spot where Moran made his sketches and watercolor drawings. The spire is called Echo Rock and is actually a short fin of sandstone that we're seeing on edge. Moran's painting has a few changes from reality, but that gives ME a chance to paint a scene similar to his while making it truly my own.

Looks like Moran had to do some significant climbing to get to this spot -- I never could have done that!!

Hope to start on it soon! Wish me luck/pray for me!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Telling the Story

When I got going in the art biz, I assumed if people liked the art, they would just buy it if it was in their budget. Well...some people do, many do not.

I read an online article about factors that make art saleable besides the image, style or other stuff about the art itself. The artist him/herself is a big factor, as is the "story" behind the painting.

According to the article, "the art speaks for itself" isn't good enough for collectors. They want the other things, too. The author used the example of forgeries -- accurate copies of existing artwork that only experts can tell are forgeries. Same images, only the "stories" are different -- and that's why a forgery would never sell for the price of an original masterpiece except under fraudulent circumstances.

By extrapolation, the same principle applies to original works that are NOT forgeries. I knew an artist from somewhere in Africa who did colorful, ethnic figurative paintings, and the artist had very detailed explanations of what every part of the image represented -- an actual story. Buyers loved it, and he sold like crazy!

I, on the other hand, could only explain that this desert landscape painting is in so-and-so place, and I liked the place so much, I wanted to paint it. Frankly, I never knew what else to say, and I couldn't figure out how to apply what my African artist friend said about his work.

I can't say how much of a problem this has been for me in the past. Where I live in southern California, impressionism tends to be more well-received than traditional/classical realism. I still have an online presence, but I no longer try that hard to sell paintings. I paint what I want to paint and take it more slowly.

And that's actually OK!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com