June 2022

 

I was trying to think of something to paint, and I thought maybe a still life, but then I remembered that some time ago I had noticed the hibiscus flowers growing by our front door, and took a photo of one of the blossoms. At the time I was fascinated by the long stem with the tiny yellow dots and red balls which I had never noticed before. The plant has been there for years and has survived several winter freezes, but it always comes back. It turned out to be relatively easy to paint, with the dark green background done wet on wet in about a minute, and the rest fairly simple to do.

May 2022

 

I continued with paintings from my photos of the 1999 backpacking trip with my friend, Gerald. This one is from the morning after dealing with the slide in Slide Canyon and we were hiking up the trail to Burro Pass. It was a beautiful place with rocky meadows, lots of Indian Paintbrush, and views of Matterhorn Peak straight ahead.

The morning after crossing Burro Pass and Matterhorn Pass, we climbed Matterhorn Peak. This painting is based on a photo that Gerald took of me at the summit. The view is south over Whorl Mountain. Some of my best moments ever have been on high Sierra peaks, and I wanted to show that. Having myself in the the middle of the scene added to the challenge. For years I've avoided painting people because I thought it would be too hard to do. This time, I figured that if I were try a portrait, it may as well be a self-portrait to avoid offending the subject. I don't think it looks much like me but at least I'm not offended.

April 2022

 

 In July, 1999, My friend Gerald and I did a five-day backpacking trip out of Twin Lakes, near Bridgeport. It was a loop of around 50-60 miles into northern Yosemite with a lot of off-trail hiking. On our second day, we crossed into Yosemite and left the trail at Rock Island Pass. Approaching Rock Island Lake, we hiked through beautiful meadows, and as I stopped for a photo, Gerald continued on ahead of me. The lake was an awesome place to spend the night, very silent and no people. I woke up at dawn to see the moon over the lake and the sky in shades of indigo and purple.

The next day, we hiked east into Crazy Mule Gulch and then down into Slide Canyon. We battled ferocious mosquitoes for several miles up the canyon until we reached the feature for which the canyon is named. An enormous section of the northwest canyon wall had broken away and fallen to fill about a half mile of the canyon bottom. This must have happened relatively recently in geologic time because no vegetation has grown there. I thought it wouldn't be too hard to cross, but when we got out into the middle of it, the rocks were the size of cars and houses with deep gaps between them, and we had to retreat and find a way around the edge of the slide.

I've been enjoying seeing the world turn green and flowery and felt like showing it in a painting. A photo that I took years ago on a hike in Garin Park expressed it pretty well. As often happens, when I was about halfway done, I thought I had totally messed it up, and was considering throwing it out and starting over, but I kept working anyway. When it was done, I decided that it is not too bad.

March 2022

 

In mid-February we made a three-day trip to our friend Jodie's place near Placerville. We brought Zim along and he was happy to stay in the pasture with some of his old buddies. Maureen got to do plenty of riding with Chris and Claire. It was a nice, relaxing time. We made several short walks a half-mile down the road to the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River which was flowing with plenty of water.

One afternoon Maureen was riding in the arena with Chris and Claire. Maureen was on Zim, Chris was on Zim's brother, Zaphod, and Claire was on Marvel. Some poles were randomly placed to encourage the horses to pay attention to their feet. I chose a photo for painting because of the late afternoon lighting, and I think it came out quite well if you don't look too closely.

 Our youngest grandchild, Marisol, turned 4 a couple of weeks ago. She loves our cat, Sunny, and whenever she is at our house she follows Sunny around. Maureen thought it would be nice to give her a little photo of Sunny on a refrigerator magnet. So I got down on the floor and took a close-up of Sunny's face with my phone. Her expression is one of surprise at me getting close on the floor. Later I thought that it would make an interesting painting, and here is the result.

February 2022

Before we went to Paris, we made another trip with Margaret and Bernard, this time southward in England. We stayed a couple of days in the Cotswolds, in a B&B in Bourton On The Water. The first place we visited was the village of Lower Slaughter, the subject of this painting. We loved the old-style houses built with yellowish stone that make it feel like going back in time. We walked a mile or so through the fields and woods to Upper Slaughter and on the way got caught in a downpour. We took refuge in an old mill which was now a little cafe, where the host entertained us by singing old songs from the big band era. It was a very memorable time.

January 2022

 

Continuing with scenes from our trip to the UK and Ireland in 2000, this one is of the Irish town of Roscommon. Most of our tour was planned by Margaret and Bernard, who drove us all over Ireland, but we had told them that the only place we knew of where Maureen had roots was Roscommon, so they included an overnight stop there. It is not a place that gets a lot of attention from tourists, so it was interesting to see what an ordinary Irish town looked like. This scene is from my photo of the center of town, but I used some artistic license and inserted the very impressive Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the background. The church is not really visible from this spot, but it not very far away. The church is such an important part of Irish culture, that I wanted to put this beautiful building into my painting.

Our Irish tour continued through Donegal and into Northern Ireland. At the Giant's Causeway, we met another distant cousin, Andrew, and his wife, Stephanie, and they joined us for the next couple of days. A little further east along the coast, we came to Carrick a Rede, where a rope bridge connects a small rocky island to the mainland. It was put up many years ago for salmon fishermen, but it's now a popular tourist attraction. The bridge is 100 ft. above the surging surf and crossing it is pretty exciting. After some hesitation, we all made it across.

Then I decided to skip acoss the channel to Paris. After three weeks in the UK and Ireland, we flew to Paris and spent three days there. We saw a lot of the city, riding the Metro and walking for miles and we loved it. One day we walked way across town to Montmartre, where I took the photo that this painting is based on, a street view with the dome of the Sacre-Coeur basilica in the background. At the time I didn't really know exactly where we were, but with a lot of searching on Google Street View, I determined that it is on Rue Norvins, and that the big gate on the left is the entrance to La Folie Sandrin. I looked up this place and found that it is an eighteenth century mansion that was used as a mental hospital in the nineteenth century. The word "folie" means madness in French, but according to one french article, the name of the place came from an obsolete french word meaning "woods". I was surprised that with the high school french that I learned 60 years ago I could get the gist of the article, but maybe I understood less than I thought.

December 2021

 

 I decided to continue with scenes from our year 2000 trip to the UK and Ireland. After several days in the area around Betley, Margaret and Bernard drove us west into Wales. One of our first stops was the town of Llangollen on the river Dee. We walked along the river with nice views of the town. I recently Googled the town and the image that appeared is this same view.

 We continued through Wales and took the ferry across to Ireland. We spent our first day exploring Dublin. At lunchtime we found a restaurant not far from St. Stephen's Green. I was curious about exactly where my photo was taken, so I recently spent some time searching with Google Street View. I found the spot on Anne Street, just east of Grafton Street. I don't have the patience to paint with a lot of fine detail, but I wanted this to show a lot of stuff going on, so I spent several days on it instead of my usual several hours. It was fun to do and I like how it turned out.

A couple of days after our time in Dublin, we arrived at the west coast and the town of Kinvarra where we stopped for elevenses. There was a nice little harbor with some interesting boats. In my photo, the sky was all uniform gray, as it often was all over Ireland, but a bit of blue sky made it a nicer painting.

From Kinvarra we headed north for a couple more days. Nearing Sligo, we stopped at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, an area of ancient tombs made with very large stones. I tooks photos of the tombs, but I also took one looking across the beautiful farmland with storm clouds misting the mountains. Later, as we walked around the town of Sligo, the sky let loose with heavy rain.

A few days before Christmas, we had lunch with our friends, Terry and Mike, and Terry mentioned that she would like to have one of my paintings. We have been friends for a long time, since our kids were in elementary school together. It was Terry who talked me into joining the painting class with her about eight years ago and renewed my interest in painting. I considered what I could give her and thought maybe I could paint something new for her, and looked up some photos that I took years ago when we stayed with them at their cabin in the mountains near Chester. It was a beautiful spot on Warner Creek which runs out of Lassen Park. However, I'm not sure how they might feel about it. A few months ago, they lost the cabin in the Dixie Fire, and there is nothing left of it now. I'm hoping that the painting may remind them of the good times there and not of the loss.