August 2025

Sydney is an old friend who has a horse at our barn. She is just a few months older than I am and the horse, Cheyenne, is also quite old. He has a problem with his legs that means that he can't be ridden or turned out. He is mostly very calm and patient, but sometimes he gets excited and needs to move. A couple of months ago, Sydney and her friend, Jonathan, were walking Cheyenne around the barn when he made a quick movement which startled Sydney and she fell and broke her hip. She is slowly recovering, but she has been unable to see her horse for a long time. Some years ago Sydney asked me to paint Cheyenne and I turned her down, telling her that I wanted to stay free to paint whatever I felt like painting. Today that feels kind of selfish, and so I made this painting to give to her.

I chose to paint another one of my photos from Point Lobos. Actually, it was two photos. My first photo only showed one branch of the left-hand tree. At the time I thought that it might be a good scene for a painting, so I turned to the left and shot another one with the tree, and combined them when I did the painting. I like the way it turned out.

I found a photo I took in 2004 of the trail up the canyon from Twin Lakes, near Bridgeport. My first time up this trail was in 1957, when I started a boy scout backpacking trip here. Since then, we have done it a number of times and always really appreciated the beauty of the place. I love the pine forests and aspens, the meadows and sagebrush flats, and the rugged mountains all around. This is another painting that I think turned out well.