In looking back through my photos for painting ideas, I found lots of nice shots from our trip to Utah and Colorado last summer, but one especially caught my eye. We had been exploring Dinosaur National Monument and had taken a side road where one of the features was a cliff face with some petroglyphs. I hiked up a short distance from the dirt road to see them, and noticed that the view across the little valley was quite pretty. The scene didn't all fit into a single photo, but one of the advantages of painting over photography is that is easy to rearrange a scene to fit the paper.
When I entered one of my paintings in the current show at the Hayward Foothill Gallery, it came as a surprise when they asked me to volunteer to sit in the gallery for a couple of shifts, but I agreed to do it anyway. I signed up for a couple of Thursday mornings, figuring that I could use the time to do some more painting. So I sat there painting at a small table and had practically no interruptions. I realized that showing my art at local galleries is not getting it seen by a lot of people. That's OK, I'm not in it for fame and fortune anyway. I chose another scene from the same day at Dinosaur. We hiked into Hog Canyon, a beautiful little box canyon which started out with meadows and flowers, and soon became a narrow slot in the cliffs.
For my second Thursday at the gallery, I chose another shot from last summer's trip. This one was on our way from the tiny town of Maybell, Colorado to the Sand Wash area to look for wild horses. The dark clouds became a downpour while we were exploring remote dirt roads, and we were lucky to get out of the area without getting stuck in the mud. I knew that the dark clouds were going to be challenging, which is one reason I chose to try. Much of the painting ended up overworked and muddy, but I like it pretty well anyway. It may be worthwhile trying it again some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment