March 2024

In February we spent several days at Jodie's place near Placerville to help Chris and Claire take care of the horses. Claire had surgery on her ankle and was not able to get around much and Chris had to come to the Bay Area to teach riding lessons. It was like a little vacation for us. We had 15 horses to feed three times a day and a couple of stalls to clean, but we were free to do whatever for much of the day. It rained a lot while we were there and one morning after a night of rain, we were down by the barn to feed and I liked the look of the mist on the hills so I took a photo and used it for this painting.

On Facebook the only group that I belong to is "Eastern Sierra & Scenic Hwy 395". I like it because I love the area and people post a lot of photos. Some of them are really good photographers. One day I came across a photo of a little stone cabin and some great mountains. I usually prefer to use my own photos for paintings, but once in a while I find one from someone else that just cries out to be painted.

I walk the mile-long trail to the water tower from the barn a couple of days a week and I've been doing it for months. I am almost always accompanied by Maureen riding Zim and Judy riding Mumu. When I reach this spot on the trail I often think it would make a nice painting. Now I've finally done it. I walk pretty slow, so by this point the riders are usually far ahead, but I don't mind. I sit on a bench by the water tower and wait while they ride a little farther.

In September, 1973, we did a backpacking trip into the Glacier Peak Wilderness in the North Cascades of Washington. It was some hard hiking, especially for Maureen, who was three months pregnant with our future son Aaron, and our dog, Matt, who had to carry all of his food in a doggy backpack. We drove to the town of Darrington northeast of Seattle, and hiked up the White Chuck River to Kennedy Hot Spring, then thousands of feet up to Lake Byrne. We found a campsite near the lake shore with an incredible view of 10,541 ft. Glacier Peak across a huge canyon. I used my camera's self timer to get a shot of us in camp. In painting it I expected the top half to be difficult, but it turned out to be quite easy, but the bottom half was hard because it was very dark and murky in the photo and I'm not so good at doing people, especially ourselves. I'm thinking of trying it again in landscape orientation so I can use it in my next calendar. I recently looked it up and found that this hike is not possible anymore because several years ago floods wiped out everything — road, trail and hot spring.

February 2024

 

We frequently go out for a ride/hike from the barn where Zim lives. Maureen rides and I walk, and we often go with our friend, Judy, on her horse, Mu Mu. We almost always go on the same trail which is officially the Goldenrod Trail, but everyone at the barn calls it the Water Tower Trail, because it goes past a large water tank. It winds along a wooded hillside with lots of nice views. I especially like one spot where there are lots of big mossy rocks. One day soon after a rainstorm, I came around this bend to see this scene all wet and sparkly and I took a photo. Later I decided to paint it, but it seemed to need something more, so I inserted Maureen and Zim from another photo.

On our trip to the desert last May, we were on our way from Darwin to our motel in Lone Pine and the sky was putting on a great show. We stopped several times for photos. I liked this scene for the clouds and light, and just to add a bit more interest I inserted the shapes of several wild burros from another photo. There are burros all over the Death Valley area and they seemed to fit here.

We spent a few days in Santa Fe last October with our friends, Greg and Nancy. Greg really wanted to take us to eat at one of his favorite places, Cafe Pascual, near the plaza. It is a popular place and was quite busy, so we had to wait a while to get a table, but the food was very good. I took a photo outside with other people waiting and I thought it made a nice scene typical of Santa Fe.

I felt like doing another scene from Santa Fe. This is the St. Francis Cathedral a block away from the plaza. It's a beautiful building and we found that the interior is just as fascinating.

January 2024

I was getting ready to start the new year out with a painting. I looked through a stack of old papers and found one that was a painting that I had started months ago and put it aside because I didn't like the way it was going. I had done a sketch but only painted the sky. On seeing it again I decided that it was not so bad and I may as well finish it. I think it came out pretty good. It's from a photo I took many years ago. We were camping at Twin Lakes near Bridgeport and I climbed up the moraine at the mouth of the canyon in the late afternoon and got a nice view of Matterhorn Peak.

I tried doing a painting from one of my photos at V6 ranch last November. It was late afternoon of the first day of the clinic and all of the riders had gone out for a ride out on the range. I followed on foot, just sauntering along enjoying the golden light through the trees. This scene caught my eye and at first I wished that the fallen branches weren't there in the foreground, but then decided that they were interesting too. I think it turned out to be one of my better paintings.

Another scene from V6. We were driving back to town in the late afternoon and the light was really  pretty on the distant hills and I stopped for a photo. For the painting, I wanted to make the warm light of the hills stand out against the shaded foreground. I think it worked out pretty well.

While we were staying in Santa Fe last October, we drove up through Los Alamos to see Valles Caldera National Monument. Years ago we had driven through this area and remembered it as being very beautiful. It still is, but a big fire a few years ago has burned many areas of the forest. We went hiking in one corner of the valley that was not burnt, and really enjoyed it. This large ponderosa pine stood out near the edge of the valley grassland.

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.