Cedar & Sand
Painted in the parking lot looking south at the Apache Wash Loop Trailhead, with a scrawny coyote trotting past on a spring afternoon, (I didn’t catch him, so you will have to imagine him) this acrylic on canvas painting has it’s own oddly pleasing mix of parched sand and a purple atmosphere, and is why I love the Sonoran Desert. How these tough little cedar trees manage to survive under an unforgiving sun feels joyful and resilient without any of the green of a temperate spring. This one, this green, is on it’s way from gray to blue and green and happy to have gotten this far. Instead of looking for the most majestic saguaro in sight, I chose a modest view of desert scrub trees and shrubs, applied just the colors I saw, and stepping away was delighted with the cream-colored dried grasses, distant blue mountains, clear cerulean sky, parchment landscape with dried umber bits of deadwood, and those darkest shadows. If it can be seen even as an abstraction of these colors, and of life and death, of harsh heat and secrets of survival, all the better. Surely there are artists who choose to paint the grandest of canyons and mountains, and I’m not that, and I admit I’m drawn to closer, less sweeping, views of astonishing beauty before I even leave the parking lot for a trail. This is how I choose to look at the natural world around me, I’m not sure I know why, but it’s surprisingly fulfilling. Edgar Payne wrote in his Composition of Outdoor Painting that the artist’s most important job is thinking. I agree, and agree, and agree. 7” x 5”
Cedar & Sand
Painted in the parking lot looking south at the Apache Wash Loop Trailhead, with a scrawny coyote trotting past on a spring afternoon, (I didn’t catch him, so you will have to imagine him) this acrylic on canvas painting has it’s own oddly pleasing mix of parched sand and a purple atmosphere, and is why I love the Sonoran Desert. How these tough little cedar trees manage to survive under an unforgiving sun feels joyful and resilient without any of the green of a temperate spring. This one, this green, is on it’s way from gray to blue and green and happy to have gotten this far. Instead of looking for the most majestic saguaro in sight, I chose a modest view of desert scrub trees and shrubs, applied just the colors I saw, and stepping away was delighted with the cream-colored dried grasses, distant blue mountains, clear cerulean sky, parchment landscape with dried umber bits of deadwood, and those darkest shadows. If it can be seen even as an abstraction of these colors, and of life and death, of harsh heat and secrets of survival, all the better. Surely there are artists who choose to paint the grandest of canyons and mountains, and I’m not that, and I admit I’m drawn to closer, less sweeping, views of astonishing beauty before I even leave the parking lot for a trail. This is how I choose to look at the natural world around me, I’m not sure I know why, but it’s surprisingly fulfilling. Edgar Payne wrote in his Composition of Outdoor Painting that the artist’s most important job is thinking. I agree, and agree, and agree. 7” x 5”
#236 - Acrylic on Canvas Board
Painting: 5” x 7”
In Frame: 10 3/8" x 12 3/8"
