April 2026

I needed an idea for a painting for my next open studio class. I was hiking along while Maureen and Judy rode Zim and Mumu, and saw a bunch of poppies on the side of the trail and took a couple of photos. Previous paintings of poppies were a bit unsatisfying, and I wanted them to really pop out from the background, so I used a lot of darker green. It's kind of messy, but at least the colors stand out pretty well.

Among some old photos I found one that wanted to be painted. It's from one of our trips to Canada when we spent some time on Salt Spring Island. The scene is in Ruckle Provincial Park on a trail along the northeast shore. We've been to the island several times and we always love it there. One of the women in my painting class said that she grew up in Vancouver and knew the island. She said she loved the arbutus trees on the shore. We did too, and we noticed that the arbutus is the same tree that we call madrone in California.

We took Zim up to Placerville for the annual retreat. As usual, I took quite a few photos, but found most of them uninspiring since they look much like the thousands of clinic photos I've taken in the past. But up in Chris and Claire's place, I noticed a large photo on the wall, a tight shot of a horse and saddle. I thought about painting something like that, and I used a shot of Chris on his number one horse, Picasso. I think it worked out pretty well as a painting. It focuses on the saddle area where most of the action takes place while riding. If I had included the whole horse and rider that area would have been much less noticeable.