Arroyo Secco

The little church at Arroyo Secco- painted in the morning with full light - beautiful day!

The view behind the church and the white things are everyone's plein air umbrellas!

Ken Daggett from Taos showing Coni Grant his watercolor plein air method- he was right close to the road and it made me nervous!

Coni and Patrice Walker discussing plein air painting... No, plein air painters don't have matching uniforms- even though it looks like it..

Ed Sirokman- my hero! He fixed my Soltek easel when my car door smacked it and knocked off a part of my easel-- Thanks Ed!

PAAC Show in July at Abend Gallery

My painting , "Midwinter Survival" was selected to be in the the Plein Air Artists Colorado Show July 10 thru 25, 2009 at the Abend Gallery 2260 E. Colfax Ave. Denver, CO 80206. The awards ceremony and reception will be on July 10, 2009 from 5-9 pm and the awards juror will be Karen Vance.

Sand Dunes

I will be taking this painting over to the Sand Dunes today to the exhibit they have in the visitors center. This is a painting from my imagination. The paint is extremely thick on the Chamisa bushes in the foreground and it has taken over a month to dry- I use a yellow green paint from Grumbacher and it takes an incredible amount of time. The picture I took of this has caught a little bit of glare on the surface- I should have taken better pictures....... Well, anyway, this will be in the visitor center for the summer and yes, it is for sale- I also had two paintings selected for the Dunes DIA exhibit in September.

Back from Taste of Creede

Well, I'm back from the Taste of Creede and I can honestly say that I had fun. I met up with Coni and we just kind of took in the atmosphere at first and hid out from the rain in the OMI for awhile. It was rather rainy the whole weekend but not too cold and the quick draw was quite an event. We had an hour to do a painting and then put it up for auction to benefit Creede Arts. I was stressed as for plein air one is usually allowed 2 hours for the painting time. I was even more confused when every artist pulled out these huge canvases. I was only painting an 8x10 for goodness sakes! Well they pulled it off quite well and I survived. Above is a picture of Stephen Quiller and Charlie Ewing talking about Charlie's painting (you can see it in the background.) The painting I did was the small red truck below- it resides on the north end of Creede- starting up the canyon.

Arroyo Hondo

This is a painting of Our Lady of Sorrows Church at Arroyo Hondo - what a cool village! We were going to paint this church at the fire station with Patrice but they were working on the fire engines and we would have been completely in the way so we sat up directly in front of the church and painted. I can see a few tweeks will need to be made with this one- but not too many...

The Taos Gorge

The fun about paintouts is going to places and learning about where the good views are that we would never find otherwise-thanks to Patrice, Kemper and Peg. Coni and I followed out little map and ended up at this beautiful spot on the country club road on the south side of Taos. It looks as if there are quite a few people that use this area for target practice but they weren't up as early as the painters. This is a 16 x 12 and was just getting finished up when Coni came by and said the wind was blowing horribly over by her view and so we packed up- heading for the Ranchos de Taos and setting out for a different view as we have painted there before. We knew the wind would be an issue so were hoping for the best.

Back from Taos

Well I'm back from the PAAC and NMPAP paintout in Taos New Mexico. I will be posting more pictures of paintings later but I am going to Denver for state track in a half hour and need to finish packing. This is a little gate in the back of the San Geronimo Inn-

The base of the Sangres

I decided to go over to Electric Peak to try to do a study as Electric Peak with Electric Ranch at the base is just one of the more pictuesque sights around. I had painted Electric Ranch about 8 years ago and still have my study but I would like to paint a larger, studio painting of this scene. I drove all the way to Electric Ranch but, the snow was so white and there were absolutely no shadows so it looked like there was a huge iceberg sitting above the ranch. the last time I painted it was during March and the sun was far enough to the south to get some cool shadows- so I decided to not paint electric ranch and started wondering around. This is what I came up with- which makes me wonder why I drove all the way to the northern Sangres to paint a small sliver of a white mountain- and then paint it in the wind-- what was I thinking?

Church at 7 mile Plaza

I decided to get out bright and early to paint this morning as the clouds to the west were rolling around and looked quite interesting. I looked at this little church always trying to find a way that I could paint it to make it work but I always try to paint it from the other direction which doesn't work very well- I decided to climb this little hill behind it- and as there was a real estate for sale sign on this property and I happened to know the realtor I drove the Cruiser up a four wheeler path and parked. It was a great view to the church from this point and the weather held out til about 11:30. I drove home and by 12:00 it was raining-finished just in time!

Challenger

Ah, the Sangres- so majestic and cold looking- the snow is melting by the day and soon there won't be one more snowflake on these peaks. Challenger is the square peak to the left- that's what Coni told me anyway- and I think that maybe the pointy one to the right is the needle? If I'm wrong- somebody please let me know - ok?