Southwest Landscapes

Spectacularly serene.  Mesas. Deserts. Canyons. Gorges. Dunes. Mountains. Lakes. Rivers.  And skies as vast as the ocean.  The Southwest landscape is a wonderland of dramatic natural settings as deep and rich as their primordial roots.  Created during my residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and visits to Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevadas, my series plays with the striking rock formations, unparalleled palettes, and diverse textures, from scruffy to lush, craggy to velvety, gushing to billowy.  The earthy rawness is heavenly hypnotic.   

Ancient Roots, Tent Rocks National Monument, Cochiti, New Mexico

Medium: Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas

Size: 18" X 24"

No view is cast in stone. Interpretations can abound.  The amusing tent-shaped peaks and exposed octopus-like roots of the Ponderosa pine inspired further whimsy.  To breathe playful life into a largely cream-colored monochromatic prehistoric site, I deepened the rose, salmon, blue, and terracotta colors of the rocks along the path and of the striations of the rock faces.  I even added new colors of greens, purples, and grays.  I decided to dust the foreground rocks with real sand after a gust of wind tossed the wet canvas face down on the ground during one plein-air painting session.

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Detail - Ancient Roots

Small pebbles from the on-site path were glued onto a rock face to affect true, three-dimensional depth of a millions-year-old sedimentary rock layer in the foreground.  This multimedia treatment contrasts starkly against the three-dimensional illusion created with the series of precipitous rock walls stretching into the distance toward a hazy vanishing point. 

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Morning Reflections,

Abiquiú Lake, New Mexico

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  14" X 14"

Fluctuating light.  Fickle weather.  I battled both when catching the reflections of famed New Mexican painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s favorite mountain, Cerro Pedernal, on Abiquiú Lake.  Within three hours of plein-air painting of this high desert locale 7,000 feet above sea level, five weather systems rolled through: sunshine, clouds, rain, hail, and strong wind.  Out of necessity, I quickly captured my impressions of fleeting moments of this kaleidoscopic setting of the Southwest.

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Detail - Morning Reflections 

Impressionistic paintings are comprised of layers of spontaneous undefined and separate brush strokes of contrasting colors as inspired by hues and light.  When viewing the applications from a distance, they amalgamate into clear forms and identifiable images as part of a whole composition.  But each close-up of a slice of the entire painting can stand on its own as a little abstract painting, like this corner from Morning Reflections.

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Grand Canyon

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  18" X 24"

Striking contrasts exemplify the inherent majesty of the North Rim view of the Colorado River cutting through the Grand Canyon.  Towering precipice, deep valley.  Impervious stone, fluid water.  My interpretation dramatizes them further.  Defined orange-red foreground, amorphous blue-grey background.  Smooth rock surfaces, crusty rock beds.  Glints of light, dense shadows.  A homage to one of the world’s wonders.

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Detail - Grand Canyon

The large side rock was carefully crafted for singular effect.  Palette knife applications of thickened yellow ochre and iron red paint molded intricate fissures, while a brown glaze fashioned shadows.
 

The River Wild,

Abiquiú, New Mexico

In this interpretation of the vista of the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande, from Highway 84 in Abiquiú, the diverse textures of the arresting high desert of northern New Mexico are fiercely raised up via a bold impasto style created with a palette knife.  The thickness of the mountain forest.  The cragginess of the mesa.  The scrubbiness of the pinions and junipers.  The grittiness of the sand.  The frothiness of the rapids.  The rushing of the river running around the bend.   An untamed statement of untamed terrain.

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Detail - The River Wild

An impasto technique delivers real dimension.  The palette knife can be used to blend thick paint (as for the flat plains and river) or to apply sharp strokes to create distinct forms and activity (as for the bushes, rapids, and mesas)

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Lily Lake,

Lake Tahoe's Sierra Nevadas, California

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Serene and pure.  That's how this setting felt during morning plein-air sessions -- and likely the inspiration for its name.  The painting, however, crackles from quick strokes and contrasting textures: soft grasses, prickly pines, craggy stones under mist, flowing water.  The composition rocks, too.  The lake's S-shape pulls the eye in and back.  Attention twists around via the torque of crisscrossing invisible diagonal lines connecting similar forms: the arrowhead shape of the mountain and lake tributary and the roundness of the grassy peninsula and distant mountain.  Morning peace becomes electric.  

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Death Valley 

Radiating with life.  Such is the interpretation of my unforgettable hiking experience of the monumental sand dunes of California's Death Valley National Park.  Earthy ocher and olive tones of the sand and passionate crimson of the crater.  Hot electric yellow orange sky.  Sultry textures.  Sensual lines.  Sexual shapes.  All flowing in and out and around in one vibrant abstraction that belies the somber name of this location. 

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Detail - Death Valley 

All of the palette's rich colors blended together create a three-dimensional downward spiral at the crater's edges and basin.   This closeup is its own abstract painting. 

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Another Angle - Death Valley

Might there be a dark side to this abstraction that more truly reflects the park's name?  Turn the piece 45 degrees to the left.  Is that caped figure the Harbinger of Death?  Which twist is more ironic?  Life?  Or death? Or are they one in the same for this singular landscape, one leading to the other in a timeless, endless cycle?