December 2023

 

Bear's Ears National Monument is a large area of southeastern Utah that had been in the news when it was given protection by Obama, then greatly reduced in size by Trump, and then restored by Biden. It was a place that meant a lot to the Native American people of the area. On our recent southwest trip we wanted to see some of it. It appeared that the most popular trail was Mule Canyon to a ruin called House on Fire, so we set out to find it from our motel in Blanding, Utah. We discovered that as a very new national monument, Bear's Ears is only minimally developed, with very few signs or visitor information. After a lot of searching on bad dirt roads, we found a spot with several cars parked along the road that was the trailhead. The trail led up a beautiful little canyon and we enjoyed our walk so much that we didn't bother going all the way to the ruins. The rocks and meadows, birds and flowers were enough for us.

Two weeks after our southwest trip, we took Zim four hours south to the V6 ranch for a 4-day clinic about working with cattle. On the first full day of the clinic, the riders had to go 2.5 miles down the road to the town of Parkfield and bring back 125 yearling heifers and steers. I took some photos as they approached the horse camp, and used them for this painting.

One of the best days of our southwest trip, we went for a hike into Grand Wash, a canyon in Capitol Reef National Park that cuts through the rock formations of the park. It's a beautiful place with ever-changing views of the cliffs, and mile or so down the canyon are the narrows, where the wash is squeezed between high vertical walls. It's not so narrow as to make one claustrophobic, but it is pretty spectacular.

November 2023

 

 

In October we spent two weeks traveling through the southwest. On the way we went to Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab. We hiked out to one of the view points at the edge of the cliffs and enjoyed fantastic views of the canyons below. I started by putting together a scene from several photos including one of Maureen sitting near the edge. She suggested that I put myself into the picture instead so I looked through her photos and found one of me sitting at the same spot. I see it as kind of a warm-up painting after a couple of dry months.

September 2023

 

Pam Houston's barn. Maureen came across an image online that she thought I might like and sent it to me. It was a photo of a barn from one of our favorite writers, Pam Houston. I don't usually like to paint from other people's images, but this looked interesting so I tried it.

Mt. Ritter's west face. In 1976 I spent a week crossing the Sierra from Yosemite Valley to Silver Lake. I was hiking alone and for several days I was off trail and didn't see another soul. I was climbing out of the North Fork of the San Joaquin and was nearing Ritter Lakes at around 11,000 ft. elevation when my eye was caught by this bank of snow with Mt. Ritter behind it. Many years ago I painted the scene with pretty good results, but I decided to try it again anyway.

 One of my favorite places is Bridgeport Valley and the Twin Lakes area. We've been camping there many times and I've probably done more backpacking trips there than anywhere else. That includes three times making a complete loop around Sawtooth Ridge which is the main feature of this painting. This is based on a late afternoon photo taken on one of our camping trips sometime in the 90s.

In looking through old photos for something to paint, I came across some from a trip we did in 2004 into eastern Oregon. We saw antelope at Hart Mountain and Steens Mountain and I chose to do a painting based on my  photos. Pronghorn antelope range all over the high desert areas of the west, but I've only seen them a handful of times, so they are kind of special to me. That beautiful area is also quite special and I'd love to go back some day.

I came across a photo on Facebook that I thought would be fun to paint. It was by a photographer named Aston Meyer. I looked him up and he has lots of beautiful photos that I really like. I hope he doesn't mind that I used his photo for this. He didn't identify the location which was a good thing since people tend to flock to places with beautiful photos online. I would guess somewhere in the Palisades or Bishop Creek area.

August 2023

 

We wanted to go out to dinner for my 79th birthday, and I suggested Quinn's Lighthouse on the Oakland waterfront. We had been there once before and liked it. When we got there we found that the main downstairs area was closed and the upstairs was packed and very noisy. We tried to think of alternatives, and Maureen had read about a place in Alameda, Pier 29. So we drove across Alameda to the Ballena Bay neighborhood. The parking lot was nearly empty and an older couple was coming out and we thought maybe it was one of those places for old people. Well, it kind of was, but it was quiet and uncrowded and the food was ordinary but pretty good. It was right next to a marina with lots of boats, and as clouds moved in there was a rainbow. Then, as we were leaving, we saw an incredible sunset across the bay, which I tried to show in this painting. It turned out to be quite a memorable birthday.

July 2023

 

In June we spent three days in Novato where Maureen and Zim practiced working with cattle at a Chris Ellsworth clinic. As usual, I took lots of photos and used one of them for this painting. I wanted to show something typical of the action, dust and all. I find that painting cattle and horses is a bit challenging, but I keep trying.

For a couple of weeks I didn't feel like painting much. I had knee replacement surgery on July 5, and the recovery has been painful. After a couple of weeks, I felt up to going out for a while, so we went to the barn and then out to lunch. We chose to go to Mosley's Cafe, a tiny place on the estuary in Alameda. It's in the Grand Marina area, out at the end of a little pier where a ship of the Alameda County Sheriff and a couple of Coast Guard cutters are moored, besides countless private boats all around. I snapped a photo with my phone from our table and used it to paint this scene. It reminds me of the beautiful day there and how nice it was to be outdoors and free after my surgery.

June 2023

I looked through my photos from our trip to Darwin, and I found one of a beavertail cactus in bloom. It was found on a hike led by cousin Bill up to an old mine in the hills near the town. The intense color of the blossom caught my eye, which especially stands out against the muted colors of the desert landscape.

This is the center of Darwin, the intersection of Darwin Road and Main Street, and the town's only stop sign. The old gas station is kind of picturesque. I painted a view like this many years ago, but I think I did a much better job this time. I think it gives one an idea of what the town is like -- a scattering of shacks a long way from anywhere, but doesn't show the lively community of misfits that it is.

I asked Maureen for a suggestion for a painting subject, and she said maybe something with lots of color. She remembered a little street fair in the town of Ganges on Salt Spring Island in Canada that we visited in September, 2019. I remembered it too and the iPhone image that I shot at the time. I had often thought of trying to paint it, and now it seemed like a good idea. The island is one of our all-time favorite places and this brings back good memories of the several times we have been there.

May 2023

I went looking for more painting ideas from our trips to the Southwest. This one was from our 1992 trip when we spent a few days camped at Capitol Reef. The Fremont River runs through the park and it makes a beautiful contrast with the dry red-rock canyons. We have plans for another trip to this area in October and I'm getting pretty excited about it.

 

I came across a photo on Facebook that I thought would be fun to paint. All I know is that it is somewhere in the Sierra and probably taken recently.

My cousin, Joe, passed away recently, and we made a trip to Darwin for a memorial. Darwin is an interesting place. It is a semi- ghost town near Death Valley where Joe and his wife, Jody, have lived for the last 40 years or so. When we arrived a group of family and friends were hanging out at Buck's place, a shack that Joe and Jody fixed up to rent out on AirBnB. I took a photo with my phone and it turned out to be the one I chose to paint. It seemed to sum up how I felt about being there.

After our trip to Darwin, I looked through some old photos from 1999, the last time we visited Joe and Jody. At that time, they took us on a long drive into Death Valley National Park on rough desert roads to see the Racetrack, a playa where rocks mysteriously move across the salt flats leaving long trails. On the way we passed Teakettle Junction, a very remote location where people have left many teakettles hanging from the sign.

April 2023

 

On our 1999 trip to the southwest, we spent a couple of nights in Sedona. We went hiking at a place that I think was Boynton Canyon. After a couple of miles, the canyon ended at a big cliff. It was a pretty spectacular place and we enjoyed it a lot. The town was interesting because of all the new-age stuff going on there — people looking for power spots and some kind of enlightenment.

March 2023

 This year started off with a lot of rain but there were a few dry days in early February. On one of them I had to go to the lab at Pleasanton Kaiser, and when I was done, I went walking in an area just across Foothill Road from the clinic called "The Preserve". It's a residential development and the only things preserved are a few acres of open space land on the lower slopes of the hills. After years of drought, it felt really good to see everything so green again. This scene caught my eye and I took a photo with my phone intending to paint it later.

 One day I followed Maureen and Judy as they rode south from our barn on the Goldenrod Trail. I snapped a photo with the thought that I might use it for a painting. I think it worked out pretty good.

It has been a cold, wet winter this year and some of the storms dusted the local hills with snow. Our friends, Norma and Mike, have a ranch up in the mountains south of Livermore, and one day Norma went up there and took a few photos which she shared with us. Some years ago they had a male donkey named Guido on the ranch and they adopted a female, Dolly, to keep him company. Guido got old and died and now Dolly is all by herself, but she gets along quite well.

I had been looking for an idea for a painting and remembered that just about any scene from everyday life could be interesting — like the light coming through the living room window while Maureen worked on her jigsaw puzzle.

January 2023

 

Last September, on our Mammoth trip, we drove out to the east of Mono Lake looking for wild horses. After seeing a herd of them in the far distance, but failing to get close to them, we continued driving east to Benton Hot Springs. It was an interesting historic spot but disappointing because everything was closed to the public. There's not really much there but this old building and a hot spring resort. I guess you have to stay at the resort to get the full experience.

This is a scene from a backpacking trip that Gerald and I did in 2008. We spent four days going from Rock Creek over Mono Pass and into Pioneer Basin. This was at Ruby Lake early in the morning of our second day. I painted the same scene nine years ago (see May 2014, "spring 2014"), but although I liked it, I was unsatisfied with the muddy colors in the reflection. This time the painting is lighter and less colorful, but I think I did a much better job and it comes a lot closer to the original photo.

I looked through some photos from our first big trip to the Southwest in 1992 and picked out a few as possible subjects for paintings. The first one that I tried was one of Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly. It's a very interesting place — as much for the canyon views as for its location in the middle of the Navajo reservation. You don't get much sense of size from this view, but the rock is more than 800 ft. tall, a pretty spectacular place.

On that same 1992 trip, we camped for a couple of days at Capitol Reef National Park. We loved the place, especially the area of Fruita, the remains of an old farming settlement of Mormon pioneers. The campground is there next to an apple orchard where the deer came to eat every evening. This old barn is there too, which made a nice scene against the colorful cliffs.

This was another scene from our 1992 trip. We were in New Mexico and visited one of the small Native American reservations or pueblos between Santa Fe and Taos. There wasn't much to see at this village, but we enjoyed walking around a bit and this stone gate to a cemetery caught our eyes. We stayed several days camped on the shores of the Rio Grande and we loved the interesting history and culture of the area.

On our 1992 trip we made a stop at Monument Valley. It is an amazing place, but I was a bit disappointed because of the way the tribal park is set up. I expected something like one of the national parks, but found just a big visitor center that seemed to be only there to sell guided tours. We saw a few cars heading out from the big parking lot on a dirt road, so we followed them. It felt like we probably weren't supposed to go there except with a tour, so I kind of expected to be stopped by tribal police and told to leave. That didn't happen so we drove around a loop road with lots of great views. At one point off to the side of the road was a navajo woman and a kid sitting in the sand all dressed in beautiful traditional clothing. Apparently we were supposed to pay them to take their photo, but I didn't stop. I was hoping to be able to hike around, but didn't find any trails and getting out of your car was not encouraged. I did get a few good photos and used one of them to paint this.