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.
