Poppies and Peaks

Nearly every day Maureen and I go up to the ranch where our horses are boarded to check up on them, get them out of their stalls for a while and feed them some grain. Maureen usually rides one or the other of them too. I don't ride so often, so sometimes I take a walk with our dog, Darby, instead. We were recently walking down the hill near the barn when I noticed a nice patch of poppies. I thought that they would be a nice subject to paint, so I took a couple of photos with my iphone. I wanted to get the hill and sky behind them too, so I got right down on the ground among the flowers. My painting followed the photo quite closely. I feel that if there is creativity in my photography, it will show up in my painting too. For this painting, I decided to use a bit larger paper size than I had been using before, 11x16 instead of 10x14. Somehow, covering a larger area feels like a bigger deal and maybe I put a bit more into it.

I was trying to think of something that I would like to paint, and for quite some time I have had in the back of my mind some old memories of high and wild places in the Sierra. In particular, I thought about an area I hiked through in September, 1976, on a week-long solo backpacking trip from Yosemite Valley to the east side of the range at Silver Lake. The headwaters of the North Fork of the San Joaquin is very far from the beaten track, and it felt wild, lonely and beautiful. Late in the day, I remember thinking that the surrounding mountains looked like those of a Maxfield Parish painting. I think I caught the feel of the place pretty well in this painting.

The morning after the scene of the last painting, I hiked up out of the canyon and into an area as wild and desolate as any I had ever seen. This was Ritter Lakes, just west of Mt. Ritter, the highest peak in the whole Yosemite-Mammoth area. Beyond the lakes is Mt. Ritter's southwest glacier. In 1976, the glaciers were fairly good sized, but I would guess that they are smaller now. A few minutes after I passed this view, I ran into another hiker, the first person that I had seen in four days. By a strange coincidence, he was following nearly the same route as I was at the same time. We spent the next couple of days together, and it was really nice to have someone to talk to again.