It's no secret that my favorite season of the year is autumn, when trees seem to be huge flowers that bloom in radiant colors.
Autumn Splendor is the latest painting that shows my idea of what fall looks like (which it doesn't in the desert where I live!). Complete with some mallards, my favorite species of duckies.
The location is imaginary -- but it's a place I'd love to see. Enjoy!!
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
I was surprised to learn that seagulls tend not to occur in the Hawaiian Islands. Apparently, they don't care much for the food they find there. Thus, they only stop by temporarily if they're migrating.
But the tropicbirds fill that ecological niche!
There is also a red-tailed species. I'll have to paint one of those birdies sometime, too.
Enjoy!!
Mark Junge
Autumn Glory is my newest painting. This is one of the peaks in the Elk Range in Colorado -- near Aspen, and the same mountain range that includes the fabled Maroon Bells. I think this mountain is Pyramid Peak, although I'm not sure about that. The size is 11" x 14" / 28cm x 36cm. I may do a reshoot of the painting, since this one didn't come out that great.
I had considered adding some wildlife to the scene -- some mallard ducks or maybe some deer (I DID see a buck and doe together when I was there), but then I decided -- naaahhh. I didn't feel like it!
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Extinction is a new painting in a surrealistic style, a look I rather enjoy.
The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm and shows a post-apocalyptic scene, We don't know if the female is the last living human on earth, or if she's the only person out in the open. A destroyed city and clock loom in the distance, and the ground is giving off a yellowish polluting gas. Dead trees and dry, cracked earth complete the setting.
Sometimes the current events and what they mean to the future of our planet totally depress me, and that's the way I felt when I began this painting. There are "leaders" who seem hellbent on destroying the planet just so they can feed their hyperinflated egos. I know someday Jesus Christ will come, but how much is it going to hurt until He does?
May He help us all.
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com
Two more desert landscape paintings -- one small, one mini! Both are of Joshua Tree National Park.
JT12 5" x 7" / 12.7cm x 17.8cm 
Dawn II 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm
This is a painting of a desert wash in the southern part of Joshua Tree National Park.
This area spawns glorious wildflower color in the spring (if enough rain has fallen at the right time), and even washes -- "rivers" that are dry most of the time -- features bursts of color. In this case, chuparosa shrubs produce red blooms that are much loved by hummingbirds. The smoke tree will bloom -- if it does -- later, most likely in June.
The size of this painting is 5" x 7"/12.7cm x 17.8cm.
As we all know, Aries is a zodiac sign which references a ram. In this case Aries is a desert or peninsular bighorn sheep.
Actually, this is the second time I painted a bighorn and named him Aries, so the painting is entitled Aries II.
In my opinion, bighorn sheep are the majestic animals of the desert -- so noble, so graceful -- and so endangered. The herd populations are slowly increasing in size, but they've got a way to go in areas that break up their habitat with highways, development, humans...stuff like that.
This scene is in Joshua Tree National Park, although I added the rock pinnacle that the bighorn is standing on, and I added the bighorn, too -- this one actually lives at the Living Desert Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Palm Desert, CA. I think I did an OK job of showing the space the way it would look with the bird's eye view, the pinnacle and the sheepie!
Enjoy!
Mark Junge
www.MarkJunge.com or SouthwestSpaces.com
Aries II 18" x 24" / 45.7cm x 61cm
