Goldwell, November, 2009

This is a residency journal from November, 2009, where I spent a month, painting plein air from the Goldwell Open Air Museum’s Red Barn in the Amargosa Desert. Below are the seven panels, 4 feet x five feet (28 feet total) of the Amargosa Panorama which I painted while I was there. The Panorama shows a full day of light and shadow, about 200 degrees of sight line,  painted on thirty 7-hour days.

The experience was one of a lifetime; I never expect to have the same kind of total immersion and isolation in one place again.

While this was a single month, November, during a single year, 2009, and so is singular, it is also composed of all those minutes and hours that I had access to this desert scene; there were minutes where I could see, but only for those specific minutes, things that may not be seen again by human eyes. Certainly there were minutes where I saw what I could only discern during those moments and not before or after in the other parts of my stay. Immersion and isolation and visual recordings lead to a context unavailable in any other way.

The Amargosa, Panel 1 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The  Amargosa, Panel 2 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The Amargosa, Panel 3 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The  Amargosa, Panel 4 (center) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The  Amargosa, Panel 5 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The  Amargosa, Panel 6 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

The  Amargosa, Panel 7 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Notes from Sept, 2009:

Before I travel back to Beattie, Nevada, for a second Residency at Goldwell Open Air Museum, I need a plan, an agenda, a scheme to make this trip build on what I know about that specific  space and place. I need to plan a way to further my vision, hence my art, hence my viewers’ visions, of that space and place.

I’m going back to paint a desert surround, a panorama, a cyclorama, that captures something of the interaction of desert and my psyche —plein air landscape, possible only because the Red Barn doors open to the view of the Amargosa Plain, and part internal memory, mind, and meanderings.

My plan, always subject to change, is to paint large panels, panels that keep the viewer from being able to encompass everything from a short distance, forcing her to walk lengths of hung canvas and to look up high and down low. These will be big canvas panels of that area that William L Fox calls “the void.”

I shall always be indebted to Mary Hill for getting me to read Fox, whose book, The Void, the Grid, and the Sign as well as Aereality have informed my thinking about the Amargosa plain and its neighbors.

Coming back to Portland from the desert in late March 2009 was difficult. My painting couldn’t jog itself back to gentle, domesticated rainy cityscape. Finally, in high summer and a week-long plein air set of paintings finally got me into the trees of city parks and a mind-set for green and gold. But later, in August, I went off to the high desert of southeast Oregon, near Steens Mountain, and there I started trying to regain control for the desert void.

The paintings, The Diamond Grade Panorama,  returned me to a scene I knew, so I could practice making from a single place over time, finding its patterns, working on a longer plane, and giving the imagery more context.  I learned not to crowd my canvases;  crowding in the city makes sense; crowding in the desert is non-sense. I played with time, although not with space, by having the light and shadows work as the day worked, east to west, across the 180 degree image on the panels. Seven panels, 12 hours of daylight, worked in four days. The process and results gave me courage.

In the studio, I played with space,  trying to get one canvas, Amargosa Playa 2, that I brought back from Beattie in April to be a successful painting. Even in its last  incarnation, I don’t think it’s quite right. But I got a number of ideas from working it that I think may send me flying out over the Amargosa Plain. [Hindsight tells me that in this now-destroyed painting, I found the diagonal and triangular patterns that I used in much larger ways on the Amargosa Panels.]

Here’s the first version of the Amargosa Playa 2, the one I carted back to Portland with me in April, 2009

And here’s the version of the painting as it stand on September 1, 2009

Amargosa Playa 2, 48 x 50″, Oil on canvas, 2009

So I have miles to go before I sleep, and must ignore the woods, no matter how green and deep.

So, in November, Jer (my husband) and I returned to Beattie, Nevada and the Goldwell Open Air Studio to work on a large panorama of the Amargosa Valley and Desert. This is the Journal of that November Goldwell residency.  I remind myself to remember:

Dancing, which is always accompanied by music or a beat of some kind, dramatically abrogates historical time and oriented space. When people dance, they move forward, sideways, and even backward with ease. Music and dance free people from the demands of purposeful goals and directed life, allowing them to live briefly in what Erwin Straus calls “presentic” unoriented space.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, p. 128-129

The Amargosa Desert, like all of the Range and Basin desert country, is pretty much “unoriented space.”

Day 0: The New Journey, October 31, 2009:

We’re back in Beatty, back at the Red Barn Studio, back at the head of the Amargosa Valley/desert/plain/playa, back where the land dwarfs the mind and the lungs expand with the expansive space.

It’s all here, just waiting for me. Unoriented Space.

Reporting from the Atomic Inn, Beatty Nevada, Halloween Eve and the weekend of Beatty Days. J

Day 1: Orientation, Nov.1, 2009

Yi-Fu Tuan, in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience says:

It is not possible to look at a scene in general; our eyes keep searching for points of rest. p. 161

If time is conceived of as flow or movement, the place is pause. p 198

Distance is a meaningless spatial concept apart from the idea of goal or place. p. 136

Dancing, which is always accompanied by music or a beat of some kind, dramatically abrogates historical time and oriented space. When people dance, they move forward, sideways, and even backward with ease. Music and dance free people from the demands of purposeful goals and directed life, allowing them to live briefly in what Erwin Straus calls “presentic” unoriented space. p. 128-129

Is it possible to paint unpaused place, without  goal and multidirectional (hence undirectional) space, to paint the dance, to put on canvas with brush, pigment and medium — to present “unoriented” space?

We are back in the desert. The paintings above are as close as I came last February and March to painting unoriented space. I’m giving it another try now, in November.

Day 2 : The Wall, November 2, 2009

It seems only right to issue a disclaimer: this “journal” is public, but is mostly a record for myself, so I know where I started and where I got to (whether oriented or no). Don’t feel bad if it’s boring, and you have to quit reading. I’m talking to myself, a bit like those ladies on the bus that you’d rather not sit by; I’ll never know if you move to the back of the bus.

So yesterday, these were a couple of Red Barn scenes:

That was the first tarantula I’d ever seen. Handsome creatures, they are. This one was intent on getting inside the barn until I screeched the screen door and then it scuttled away. Richard Stephens, a Goldwell Board member, tells me they migrate at this time of the year.

The empty space was just as expected. Still no water on the site except what Jer and I tote in — we even found the gallon plastic jugs with my notes (“Not for Drinking”) on them. What’s really important is all that lovely empty space.

I wish I had a video of today’s process. I arrived at the Barn when the sun was already making the desert look flat — but it was only 9 o’clock. I did my nest-making bit, finding the folding tables and setting out the vast quantities of materials that had traveled from Portland.  Then the real work started, getting the 7 panels cut, taped, and up on the wall.

I managed today to cut 4 panels, 4′ x 5′, (each having an additional 3 inches of canvas, blue tape all ’round, marking off the actual painting surface.  I must have all the panels, cut and in place, before I begin the Big Project.

As I measured and taped and pinned these panels to the wall and then sat back down to look at them, I was reminded of Dave Trowbridge’s comment on southeastmain:

“As for setting up still lifes, something I also struggle with, I did learn an interesting method from Joseph Mann. He instructed his students once to set up objects as though one was yourself, and the others were people in your life (family, friends, enemies…) and to consider your relationship to each as you place the objects together.

These panel photos looked expectant to me, as if they were posing. Family portraits.

Note the open barn door to the right– it looks out onto the landscape I’ll be painting. The day got so warm (actually the sun blazed as if I were in the desert!) that I closed the big doors for a while — the sun was too much. But this photo was taken about 3 PM, after a lovely breeze arose and the sun was far enough west that it didn’t heat up the space too much. Now the panels look like they expect something important from outside — the tarantula maybe?

Four panels was as many as I cut and measured today. When I looked out at the landscape from the Barn door, I had the beginning of real doubts about whether seven panels are sufficient. Or perhaps they are wrong in their verticality. The space is too wide, the foreground too boring, the sky too oblivious. Jer suggested I turn the panels horizontal, which seems too obvious, but sometimes the obvious is that way because it’s also correct. I thought of halving them, horizontally, and painting two paintings per panel, maybe going east to west on top and west to east on bottom. Just to make life interesting. I’m definitely starting with PM paintings on the east side and AM on the left, which should unorient a bit.

Of course, it was 4 PM when I got to thinking these wayward thoughts. It’s definitely not my time of day to think.

I noted today that the Amargosa Valley doesn’t conform to the basin and range geography very well, or at least it doesn’t conform to my (limited) notion of basin and range geography. I’m going to do some web searches tonight. The valley has the long north/south ranges with valleys (basins) between in the usual fashion. But, at the far end, there are ranges which stretch across the valley, going east to west, side to side. I know the Amargosa River slithers around the end of the Funeral Mountains and dries up in Death Valley rather than sinking into its own playa. Perhaps it is pushed there by east-west ranges in the southern part of Nevada. More research is needed. Some rest is needed. And tomorrow is another day.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, home to Beatty Days (just finished), the Atomic Inn, the Beatty Merc, and the Goldwell Open Air Museum Resident House, where I’m on my laptop, across the table from Jer, who is on his laptop

Day 3: Seven Panels, No Paint, Nov.3, 2009

I spent most of the day finishing the panel cutting, taping, and tacking up. The process looks rather elegant in this photo, although I could have cropped out a bunch of concrete. But then what would the tarantula have had to wander about on?

Here’s panels 5, 6, and 7, lined up, waiting for decisions to be made.

The easel looks skeptical to me. And I keep thinking of setting up still lifes as I photograph these. The five panel set looked best, but that had to do with the lighting and the camera range. I had to keep backing up as the group got longer.

So right now the entire set is 5 feet high by 28 feet long.

John Donahoe and his dog came in just as I sat down to ponder, so I pondered how he should paint his screen door instead. He bought one of my paintings during the last residency and so feels he has a certain in with (my) artistic eye. Mostly I pointed out that the bars he was going to use to strengthen the doors might need incorporated into any design he fashioned. And I declined to do the painting myself.

By the time he left, I felt refreshed. The panels were up and now it was time to try out various schemes on news print to see whether/what/if/how I could put the landscape on the panels, given the 4:5 ratio of each panel as well as the 28 feet of space. This morning, I thought I needed 15 panels and six months rather than seven panels and six weeks. But after John gave my brain a rest, and I started sketching, I decided that I could use the panels as they are.

I sketched out some ideas, trying out cutting the panels in half horizontally to make that horizontal desert space that most people see, but as I worked, I discovered a vanishing point — or at least a horizon that I could make use of.  Halving the canvases would have made easier painting (less to cover, for one thing) but a much more conventional scene. Less challenging, hence less fun. They don’t call me an overachiever for nothing.

So having made The Decision to use the panels vertically, as they are now taped and tacked, and having used up a pad of  newsprint, I thought I should set out some masonite boards. These are not quite the right ratio, but close (3:4 rather than 4:5) and perhaps tomorrow begin by doing plein air studies for each panel. So I put out my boards, feeling like the day went well.

It’s a bit of a line-up –where all the perps look a bit caustic.

And finally, Jer came, and I had to shoo the tarantula — yesterday’s  visitor perhaps, which really found the Barn in its migratory way — out the door. Stretcher bars, smelling of moist Portland air, perhaps hurried it on.

I decided what the second panel of the seven will depict. It’s the far end of the valley, which isn’t directly south of the Barn, but rather southeast. So it will follow the close-in Bare Mountains on panel 1 and then, in panels 3 –7,  the scene will take a long walk north-west, up the Funeral and Grapevine ranges:

East (right) side of panel 2

Left side of panel 2.

Remember, the camera flattens long landscape scenes like this, so I can see these two side-by-side scenes becoming vertical, shades of gray-green, muted yellows, and rusty-undercoat reds. I don’t intend for any of the foreground to be present. So the Amargosa Desert will (she says hopefully) float way way up the canvas, finally meeting the delicious blues of the Specter Range, with Mts. Schader and  Montgomery, past the Devil’s Hole and then curve back north of Ash Meadows, for the following 5 panels to present the Funeral and Grapevine Mountains.

Reported, more hopeful tonight than last night, from Beatty, Nevada.

Day 4: Take Brush, Put to Canvas, Nov. 4, 2009

I went altogether too long without painting. Sketching doesn’t substitute. Thinking isn’t adequate. Looking at scenery only makes one’s fingers twitch. So today I painted. Not well, not finished, but I got that brush in hand:  First I did an acrylic-painted sketch on some sketching paper I taped together (Note to self — there is no such thing as too much tape):

This is as close as you’ll get to seeing the acrylic sketch.

And note the toes of my rattlesnake stomping boots. Actually they aren’t for stomping rattlesnakes; they are for stomping the ground to make vibrations that tell rattlesnakes you are coming. Apparently that serves notice to most snakes  that a terrified human is approaching, and they are courteous enough to slither away. Only the Mojave green rattler turns and confronts the vibration. The Mojave green has both neurotoxic and hemotoxic venom and, according to Richard, who dropped by to bring me my mail the other day, is the only rattler to maintain its neurotoxic venom into adulthood. He killed one on the steps outside the side door to the red barn for the artist who preceded me.

I walk mindfully. And open the side door carefully. Actually, I open all the doors carefully, scouting them out before I confront anything under-foot. Thus far, it’s just been friend tarantula.

But back to the primary point of the day: having mucked about with acrylic, which went dry on me faster than I could spit, I pulled out my very cheap oils. I mean so cheap that I could afford to buy about 20 big tubes (120 ml) for only a little more than 2 small tubes of the real stuff would have cost. I figured for a first coat, cheap wouldn’t hurt.

I like to use transparent oils for my initial blocking out of the shapes. They disappear readily when the blocking doesn’t work. So here’s my palette, in the cheap oils, for today:

Raw Sienna, Zinc White (not transparent but essential, even early on), Payne’s Gray and Terre Verte — later I added Alizarin Crimson and cerulean blue and a bit of ultramarine. So … I got a bit excited about color…..

I had a short-in-height but longish-in-length bit of canvas on the back wall, the end of the roll, and had divided it so it approximated the scale of the big canvases (I’m not going to go into my mathematical workings for ratios — challenged is a generous way to describe what happened to me. And “approximated” is my operative word for the day.)

Anyway, here are some tools that I began with (note the painting glasses — I’d forgotten how much I need them and how often I have to take them on and off), and the back wall painting, first draft, blocking out the whole scene.

I am always shocked at how bad the first drafts are. I’m unaccustomed to painting on canvas, which eats up the paint and leaves scarcely a trace of color (and it’s doubly bad with cheap paints that have too little pigment). And the blocking isn’t right — panel number two from the left should be below the horizontal center, not above it, with the others rearranged accordingly. But this is why one does these studies, right? I think I know how the blocking should go now, so I’m less ignorant at 9 PM than I was at 10 AM.

By the time I got a bit of paint to show on the dark beige linen, it was about 3 PM — too early to quit, too early for Jer to show up. But the sun was westering nicely, which meant I could bear to be near the open doors again (the midday sun is for mad men only; I try to work away from it at that time).

I needed to sit down, so I decided to play with one of the 12 x 16 inch masonite boards and my small plein air easel. At least the boards don’t gobble up the paint. And they are ungessoed, so they mimic the dark beige of the linen of the big canvases. Here’s the set-up, and yes, it’s hard to see what you are painting when the light outside is so fierce. But I did it anyway. I could see the furthest end of the valley (panel #2) from the door; that’s what I painted.

This first draft feels like a watercolor to me. The 12 x 16 (3×4 ratio) is a bit taller than the 4 x 5 ratio of the big canvases, but at least I got the horizon almost in the horizontal center. I still need to move it down a bit.

I want to do these small boards as studies, matching the larger canvases. It will be fun to see how they match or don’t match. So tomorrow I think I’ll sling some paint at the big canvas. Even the small back wall one called for a bit of a dance: I’m eager to see how the big one goes with my toes.

And lest you think I did nothing but gaze at paint and surface all day, here’s my 3-part Obo in one corner of the studio. I gathered it today. The rocks in the desert are fantastically colored; I feel like I’m seeing treasures all ’round when I take my morning stroll. So I have the outdoor spiral, laid on the ground one rock a day, that I’m working on, and this little obo, which might grow larger as I find an irresistible chunk of earth to bring back and admire.

It can’ t get too big; it’s sitting on a small folding table. Maybe just two more rocks to accompany me on this six week  journey.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, where we had avocados in our salad for dinner and found the cheese grater. Life is good.

Day 5: Every Long Journey (and Big Canvas), Nov 5,2009

begins with a first step:

That white line on the set of canvases? It’s the “horizon” — of the basin, not of the ranges that bound it NW and SE, nor of the far distant ones that seem to bound the far southern end of the Amargosa. But sorting out the boundary of the basin allows other parts of the project to become delineated.

In Portland, I imagined an “unoriented” spatial experience, but as I prepare to paint, I’m doing more orientation than I ever imagined. Not just geographical and geological, but also light and color, ratios and cheats. And I’m of course doing studies and sketches.

I began the day by working further the masonite panel, study for #2, the furthest and lowest part of the seven panel set. The small masonite study is looking somewhat better and is certainly a relief from the gessoed linen.

Then I moved to the back wall, seven panel gessoed linen sampler, where I lowered the horizon — and then lowered it, two hours later, again. This muckled (some might say muddied) up my colors, but clarified my thinking about that Basin horizon.

Impossible for anyone but the artist to discern what’s happening on that back wall now. And I was so pleased with the way the colors were working on the second pass through. Darn.

It was while I was doing the faux-pleasing sampler that I worked out my most simple light/hue questions. The panels move from east (left) to west (right). But the sun in the evening is best as it illuminates the eastern mountains (the Bare Range); the morning sun is best for the western mountains (the Funerals and Grapevines). So PM light will be in the east and the AM light in the west. Are you disoriented yet? AM light is cool; PM light is warm. The light in the furthest distance varies so radically and erratically during the day that I think I’ll just make it beautiful, whatever temperature that turns out to be. A couple of western mountains, a spur and a small cluster in front of the main ranges, actually have great shadows in the evening, so they are going to get the PM Treatment regardless of the general scheme of things.

In addition, I’ve been reading the Henri Art Magazine Website and something the author (Mark Stone) said made me think about the nature of the color of shadows: not just that they have color, taken from the local undercolor on which they lay, but the color they take is the complimentary of the feature that is shadowed. And it has the opposite temperature. Got that?

So the warm, golden hued and cerulean blue eastern Bare Mountains (warm because they are in evening light) will have purple/green and orange tinges in their cool shadows.

I wrote all this down in my handsome notebook, which is filling up with my unhandsome handwriting:

And then, having procrastinated as long as I possibly could, I had to start the big canvases. I found the wax paper and a tub for my initial Big Panel palette (having filled a smaller palette with paint for the back wall sketching):

I filled the “palette” with titanium white and a tint of (what Soho calls burnt sienna but is really) a raw umber, along with some cerulean and ultramarine blue. I got a big brush, and I drew that long line.

By the time Jer came to pick me up, I had gotten most of the canvas smeared with some paint:

Tomorrow I will finish the small masonite study, start a masonite study for another of the big canvases (one that shows up properly in whatever time of day it happens to be) and continue to put paint, lots and lots of paint, on canvas panel number two (the one pictured above). I actually got more paint on #2 after I took the photo, but by that time, my brain couldn’t coordinate with my thoughts or my camera, so this is along the way but not quite to the end of the day. I wasn’t quite dancing, but I was moving my arms as if they were windmills. I think the dance comes later.

Reported from the Goldwell Open Air Art Museum, Goldwell House, Beatty, Nevada, 220 miles south of Reno and 110 miles north of Las Vegas.

Day 6: With a Little Help from my Friends, Nov. 6,2009

What a pleasure it is to return to a place where people know you and your habits and your needs.

Suzie and Riley McCoy, caretakers at the Goldwell Museum a half mile up the road toward the Rhyolite Ghost Town, dropped by to check on me and to see if I had the other end of their walkie-talkie. Until we find it (that could take a while) they’ve promised to physically check to see if I’ve fallen over any buckets of desert glass or gotten bit by a Green Mojave. I don’t think I need such care, but it feels good that they will look in once in a while.

And John Donahoe, after picking my brains about how to paint a scene on his screen door, loaned me a step stool to reach the top of the big canvases.

John bought Zabriskie Point from me during the last residency, and he and his dog have become regular visitors at the Red Barn. The stool is particularly wonderful because I can step on the first step and hang onto the top while I paint the top of the canvas — just the right height. He also gave me a great Hubble photo print and other fun photos he’s taken over the years. Treasures.

And then Richard Stephens dropped by. He’s the guy who told me about the Green Mojave rattlesnake the other day; he’s an artist (painter, photographer, flute maker) who no longer works in oils. So he brought me a box full of no-longer needed oil paints, which will definitely be used on the big canvases. But I was equally (or more) impressed with his flutes. He brought two and played them in the barn, where they sounded glorious.

These are based on native American (and many other cultures’) pentatonic scales, so they have that lovely eerie sound that signifies space and the universe to me. After playing inside, I made Richard go outside and play, so I could hear the sound across the desert. The photograph I took pretty much obliterates Richard’s face, but the desert scene so captivated me that I ignored the problem of shadow:

In spite of all this socializing, or maybe because of it, I also got some painting done.

I did draft 2 of the board study for the canvas panel 2:

It will get further revision, but it is giving me ideas about the canvas work that are useful. Then I started Board Panel #7,the last panel, not because I thought that was what I would work up on the canvas next, but because the light was right. The last panel is in the west, and it was morning, so it lit up some foothills of the Grapevine Range in glorious burnt siennas:

The foreground here looks much better than in panel 2;  there I’m working with longer distances so I have to do more smudging and smooghing. Here, of course, the sky needs work, but the paint has to dry a bit before I can work it properly.

Then, I thought about the big canvases and looked at the small-scale long one on the back wall  for guidance.  After using newsprint to copy out where the largest forms were located on each small-scale panel , I tore down this canvas rendition and tossed it into the trash. It had served its purpose and was too muddy to be worth trying to save.

So on to yesterday’s canvas Panel #2: I instantly realized that because of the length of the panels, I needed a rolling palette gadget. I made one up from various pieces of things I found around the studio.

The wheels allow me to move the palette along the 28 plus feet of canvas; when I tried moving one of the folding tables along the panels, it collapsed, sending all my stuff sprawling to the floor. That was when I started looking for wheels. This is strange but works just fine.

So I further worked Panel #2,  and then, the light having gone to the west, decided that Panel #1, in the east, would be what I would tackle next.

I have never painted on linen before, and certainly not on clear gessoed linen. The color of the background helps and hinders, depending….  And the weave of the canvas is startlingly obvious, even when I’ve laid on a lot of paint. I’m learning as I go and thinking that, by the time I finish, I might have some idea of what I should have known about clear gessoed linen — before I started.  Nevertheless, I am on my way. Panel #2 is on its second day and Panel #1 (on the left) is on its first day.

I’m playing with the color temperature of the sky, as you can see (The photo is a bit dark but then so is the linen underneath). The sky in these panels is mostly AM, cool ultramarine, while the basin/desert is warm. The mountains, at the left, which were made bolder, larger, and brighter after this photo was taken, will be warm blues, burnt umbers, reds, and golds with shadows of ultramarine deep, payne’s gray and maybe some cold purples.

Jer drove up just as I was frantically trying to catch the western sun on these mountains,  (the Bare range),They were all shades of gold. He took photos while I continued to lay on paint. So even if I can’t see them that way again, I’m hoping his photos will carry me through the process.

Here’s the photo I took of Panel #2 this morning; it has a bit of scale to it, with the folding table at the righthand corner.

It takes a lot of paint to fill all that space. And a lot of arm work. Maybe I’ll lose weight and/or shape up. I am going to need more Liquin medium, though. But I may have enough paint, what with Richard’s contribution, to do the job.

Reporting from The Goldwell House, in Beatty, Nevada, where the desert night has fallen and it’s definitely chilly.

Day 7: Visitors, Nov. 7, 2009

More visitors today, all welcome. First I went for a long walk north of the Barn, delighting in the scenery, the foliage, the rocks, and the human artifacts. Then, after returning, and working a bit,  John Donahoe and his greyhound (whose name I keep forgetting) showed up for more advice about painting his screen door and to show me his Hubble telescope galaxy photos. He had a loupe and had printed them on a 13 x 19″ paper and they are phenomenal, even more so under the magnifying glass. While we were looking at the galaxies, John saw the studio’s other visitor, who peered out around the corner of a storage space.

This Critter was perhaps the source of various sounds I’ve noted emanating from the far back of studio:

The photo is dreadful, but the mouse was without fear of people or flash photos, until she caught a smell of the dog, who was peacefully sleeping at our feet. That sent her scuttling.

An even more welcome visitor, a bit later, was Richard Stephens, this time without flute or oils, but with a package that had come to the post office, although addressed to the Goldwell House. I fear that the internet vendors send their packages as they deem most beneficial, regardless of address. So Richard had to act as postal carrier (luckily his wife works at the Post Office). And why was this insignificant bit of package so important?

Because I’m useless without my coffee. We brought our Peet’s beans and our coffee grinder, but forgot our filter. And we couldn’t find filters for the house coffee maker. Moreover, I’ve gotten finicky about paper filters — they often taste like, well, paper. So I ordered (oh extravagance!) a new gold filter from an Amazon vendor (cost me $6.95 plus shipping) and although I told Amazon the Goldwell House address, it went to the PO.  I hope Richard realizes that he may have saved a great world painting, just by his courteous delivery system.

And did I do any painting (after my long desert walk, my viewing of the mouse, my joy at the coffee filter, and some chatting up of a car full of tourists?) Well, some…

The little masonite boards got further work, although I didn’t start a third one.

Amargosa Desert Panel 7, 12 x 16, oil on board, 2009

Amargosa Desert Panel 2, 12 x 16″, oil on board, 2009

I will put these boards aside and work on others in the coming days, and then come back to them for final work.  On the linen panels, I managed to get paint all over Panel #3, the scene of the desert as it starts to swing south, into the Funeral Mountains just beyond Ash Meadows. And I reworked Panels 2 (third working) and 1 (second working). I opened the second bottle of Liquin and ordered more from Dick Blick. I just hope it comes via UPS and not the USPS. I’ll have to start paying Richard hourly rates and benefits of a postal carrier.

I think I can now, as Jef Gunn would put it,  start painting” on Panel 2. Panel 1 needs more underpainting and panel 3 has just barely gotten some smears. I will be trying to start a new panel each day (although that might be too ambitious), reworking the older ones as I start new ones. That may help me sort out issues that arise before they become crises. Hopefully, the panels will be ready for me to “start painting” (ie they will have 3 days of painting on them) by the end of next week. Then I can begin working color and detail and shape and re-shape. And re-color. And re-form.

My cussing of linen is getting more refined. There are a lot of ways to go wrong with the stuff and saving it after you’ve mucked it up is much more difficult that just wiping it down. Ah life. Ah painting.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, where Jer reports that Oregon and Penn State both lost their football games today. Ta-ta. But Northwestern beat Iowa!

Day 8: Pigments, Placements and Papa Cezanne, Nov. 8, 2009

Last evening in a comment on Art and Perception, Birgit spoke about “pure” and “mixed” oil pigments. I was shocked!

I know about “pure” dye powders and mixtures, and although when I was dyeing fabric I sometimes succumbed to the temptations of the mixtures, I was well aware that I was doing so. The problem with mixtures is that they can create mud. With dyes this becomes quickly apparent – put 3 dyes together, one of which is a mixture and the result is often yucky. However, I hadn’t realized it was also the case with pigment. With oils, when you get mud you can sometimes just scrape it down and start over (unlike dyed fabric), but with the linen panels I’m using, scraping is not only inefficient, it doesn’t work as well as I would like. To cover the old paint I have to resort to opaques, generally white, which then doesn’t blend well with the brownish-beige of the linen itself.

So, I am now looking at my painting tubes, some of which tell me what’s in the tube and some of which don’t.  The names of oil paints like Terre Verte and Sap Green, which I’ve come to love,  are, as Birgit’s research showed, likely to be quite different in different brands. They are also sometimes mixed pigment where one expects a single element. You’d think terre verte was a kind of green dust, but not so. So much for my faith in tradition and oil painting.

However, even with a new conundrum, it was a productive day. Only one visitor appeared and I took no long desert walks (I did a short stroll, but that didn’t count). I began by doing a study for panel 3, on board, and then realized that I had to match it to the already underway panel 2. The process definitely improved panel 2, but I can see even more that I will do to it. It’s the first board panel I did and has more reworking than the other two. Maybe my eyesight (or insight) is improving, since the later ones got better.

These look a bit strange, but trust me, they are coming along. It was the foreground that got improved in panel 2 (on the left). The dissection of the middle form will fall into place when the panels are reworked as I envision (or do I mean if I can rework them as I envision?)

Board Panel #7 won’t get reworked until I get to the end, since I want these to line up panoramically, just as the linen canvases shall.

Here’s the last photo of the day showing the 4 linen panels that I’ve now arrived at. Today I managed to rework a bit of # 2 and 3 and got a good start on #4.

Panel 3 actually gave me fits (panel 4 isn’t far enough along yet to start me cussin’).  It turns out that not only does the desert light change constantly and effect what you can see and what colors the forms take when it changes, but the simple act of walking from one side of the two open Barn doors to the other side changes what can be seen.

I worked on a board study early in the day.

(Study for Long Slope)

As I worked it from the left side of the doors, I realized that I could see the mountain forms for panel 3, so I dropped work on the board and walked to the other side of the room, where the linen panels are tacked to the wall. I blocked out what I remembered of the forms and then went back to the door (on the right side) to check on them. But what I had seen as two mountains, stacked and with the usual layer of atmosphere, had disappeared. There was but a single form. I puzzled over that, cleaned my glasses, put them on and off, and decided I must have been mistaken. There was but one mountain there.

Some time later, after I had that single mountain painted on the linen, I walked to the other (left) side of the open doors, near the earlier study. And there they were, the two mountains. I was not hallucinating. The difference of perhaps 20 feet made the difference between seeing one mountain and two.

Needless to say, two mountains are contained in the background of Panel 3, along with the red forms that are so prominent when the light is right — “right” depending on whether you want color or shadow.

Panel 3 got further work as the sun went into the west and I discovered the ridges ran northwest rather than southeast. The western shadows showed them up clearly and I dashed around the form, re-orienting the direction of the ridges.

And, as Papa Cezanne pointed out, the whole painting needs to be worked simultaneously, even though that’s out of my range of abilities. So I had to rework where the panels come together and the changing of temperature/color of the skies across the linen — it’s a whole lot easier on board than on linen, believe me.

So here are closer looks at Panels 2  and 4, which straddle #3 above. And also a photo of what awaits me. Taking Cezanne’s advice I at least outlined a bit of the largest forms that are to follow along the panels, hoping not to go too far astray.

Linen panel 2, Day 8

Linen Panel 4, day 8

This last photo was taken at mid-day, (day eight) before I had begun work on the bottom of panel 4. These are panels 4, 5, and 6, in which I am trying desperately to incorporate Papa C’s advice about working everything at once.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, which has heavenly avocados at this time of year.

Day 9: Issue du Jour — Skies, November 9. 2009

[I discovered I had published this in our general blog, southeastmain, by mistake. Not surprising, since I'm generally exhausted by the time I get to the blog in the evening. So here it is in whatever format WordPress decides to copy it in. I'm doing this for the record, not for the joy... june]

I’m exhausted. Stayed up until 9:30 last night — altogether too late. And yesterday I worked too hard  for today to be a breeze. There was not much of a breeze, thank heavens, because when there is, the barn is either frigid or a delightfully cool. Today, it would have been frigid.

So after I reworked a couple of the board panels (which I forgot to photograph), I slowly attacked the question of the the skies on the linen panels. I have a notion of what I want — cool temperature colors for the sky on the left (putative east), going neutral and flat in the middle, and then warming up on the west. So ultramarine and cobalt violet on the left, and cerulean/cobalt and whatever on the right. But I was having real trouble blending them.

The problem, I discovered, is that the cerulean/cobalt mix is both more opaque and warmer and hence on the beige linen shows up differently than does the ultramarine. It took me most of the day to smooth out the differences for the first four panels. Then I started in on panel 5 and of course, the problems were the same.

Here are panels 3, 4, and 5 toward the end of the day, where the fifth one shows some of the problems to be dealt with tomorrow:

I didn’t put much cerulean on panel 5 today, although I perhaps should have. But I decided that it was better to put up some kind of undercoat and then go with the cerulean, which in the oils that I’m working with, is a kind of bully color. It’s far brighter than the ultramarine, so I need to deal with it gently. The middle panel above has its cerulean toned down, even though it’s the central panel and I thought yesterday I had divided it between cool and warm fairly well. But this morning, it was clear that that panel needed cooling.

To see further the differences, here is panel 1, 2, and 3.

The cobalt violet is the cool but pinkish interjection  into the basic ultramarine. The middle panel has a lot of cerulean, toned, at the very base, where the sky and earth come together and pull the eye.

Here’s a view of the five panels as they existed about 3 PM today.

The post runs down one of the verticals of tape, so although it’s distracting, it doesn’t really block the view.

It was about  3:15 PM, after I took the photo above, when I sat down in front of the  big doors, exhausted, wishing Jer would show up. But as I sat there, I was looking at the Bare Mountains, that run down the east (left) panel. And clearly, in the late afternoon, they put on their own show, soaking up the western sun. I couldn’t stand it — I got back up and mixed up a pinkish-gray, and some other stuff, and with a palette knife worked that into Panel # 1. I had known it would need reworking but didn’t expect to get to it so soon.

Now it feels like I’m finally painting something besides a great big fussy wall of fabric. The Bare Mountains have huge slate sides and are flat and jagged in their shapes. I’ve painted them before with great pleasure and can see the panel is now to the point where the pleasure will start up again. I got to use my funny clay shaping tool ( it looks a bit like a putty knife), which I used on a Death Valley painting that I still like a lot. So I’ve now got enough paint on the canvas that I can ‘begin painting.”

Reported, exhausted, from the Goldwell House, where Jer may have solved the heating problem — with a little help from our friends in Vegas, who responded promptly to his cry for assistance. Me, I open the barn doors and let the sun heat up the barn while I drink my hot tea.

Day 10: Rest and Recreation, Nov. 10, 2009

I took the day off. Completely off. Didn’t go to the Red Barn. Didn’t approach Rhyolite. Didn’t go up the Beatty Cut-off. Nope. Stayed home. Went for a Tuesday Drive with Jer. Took a nap. Drank a bit of wine. Got rested.

I got up feeling tired and was then seriously put out to discover that the Liquin Medium I ordered on Friday was being sent by ground from Wisconsin and wouldn’t arrive until November 18 — 8 days from today.  I ordered it because by Friday I could see that the Liquin I had brought with me was running very low and might not make it. I was right. Yesterday (Monday) I had reduced the remaining medium (a substitute for linseed oil) to two tablespoons, with two panels left. This morning I awoke to the Fed Ex tracking number that told me the delivery date was to be November 18.

Las Vegas has a Dick Blick store, but that is a couple hundred miles round trip and I’d have to drag Jer away from his computing, something he wasn’t eager to have happen. So I groused, put on my shoes,  walked down to the Amargosa “river” (which had water running in it, a trickle I could have stepped over), listened to the grackles, looked at the golden cottonwood trees, and saw what I think was a dove or two. I stood in the sun and let it warm my back, and came back inside, where I ordered again, two-day shipping, with the surcharge for hazardous fast shipping. I did not mortgage my last grandchild but I certainly groaned a lot over the surcharge. But then I caught up on my email, finished an obscure Trollope novel that I’ve been reading for three weeks, took a nap and  when I got up, all seemed right again.

Late in the afternoon, we drove to Pioneer, a “ghost town”  north of Beatty. Pioneer dates from 1909, picking up population as the mines at Rhyolite were playing out. Unlike Rhyolite, many of the buildings in Pioneer were made of corrugated iron, rather than tents and stone, and it apparently reached its peak in March and April 1909. The town managed to struggle on, greatly reduced in size and activity, for a few years after 1909 but now, all that’s left  are heaps of tailings, pits with wire and warnings strung about them, and a nice view if you struggle through the dust to the top of the biggest tailing. A boom town indeed.

Oh yes, I forgot, there’s a head frame and an apparently modern ore hopper. And vehicle tracks,  tracks through the piles, over the piles, up the piles and down the other side.

This is a photo of the biggest remains at the ghost town of Pioneer. Probably a head frame, but perhaps a stamping mill. We couldn’t get close enough to know for sure.

–One of hundreds of desert tracks in the Pioneer area.

The ore hopper, which apparently was feeding the tailings on which we stood. They were so high I didn’t realize we were not just climbing up a natural hill until I go to the top and saw the flattened and shattered scree on which we stood.

The scene from the tailings pile at Pioneer. This looks down on a pass that leads to the Sarc0batus flats –the hills  beyond are part of the Nevada (Military) Test Site, off-limits to civilians.

We thought about taking the road on west and north around the hill (part of the north Bullfrog Hills), getting back to route 95 at Springdale (an even shorter-lived desert town with no trace left except a sign) but the “road” quickly deteriorated into a track, which the Honda, low-slung as it is, did not like traveling. And Jer didn’t like driving. And I was without a coat and my snake stomping boots. So being cautious as well as hungry, we turned around and drove back the way we came, waving to the wild burros on the hillside as we went by.

A day off with a Tuesday drive in the wilds isn’t a bad thing once in a while. Tomorrow, I’ll return to the Barn to work on the Board panels, which don’t call for much medium. That will give me more studies to play with while I await Fed Ex and the Liquin. I’m thinking of buying one of Richard’s flutes to entertain me when the painting isn’t going well. Somehow the sound seems like it might aid the magic.

From Beatty, Nevada, where I can still taste the dust of Pioneer.

Day 11: Back to Work, Nov. 11, 2009

A friend suggested I might be a tad too obsessed with my painting project and not adequately admiring the desert as I did last time I was at the Amargosa. While I allowed that this couldn’t possibly be the case, I did take a longer walk in my territory today and found one of the more charming bits of debris among the cacti:

This appears to be a piece of a glass pitcher, with its handle still identifiable. Some archaeologist is going to have fun with this some day, although she won’t have to dig deep to find it. At least not for another couple thousand years.

But it was back to work after I placed my stones on my widening gyre in the barn “yard.” First I got to salvage the Gamsol mineral spirits that were still usable (ie not sludge). This calls for special gloves and double bagging of the sludge bits:

After the Gamsol was cleansed of its oogier parts, I could procrastinate no longer.

Without the necessary Liquin medium (due to arrive in Beatty by 4:30 tomorrow afternoon), I could only work on the smaller masonite boards; they require very little medium. I had been dabbling at them, but not very methodically. The change in the sun’s path is so  critical that when I could see the mountains properly, I painted on the linen canvases. And, truth to tell, the task of filling the linen canvases with paint is so large that I feel under continual pressure to work on it rather than on the smaller boards.

But today, all I could do (Very Big Grin) was work sitting down with these easily manipulated boards–easy to “erase” with fresh paint thinner if the image goes wrong; easy to fill up with paint and then overpaint without sagging or dragged or bugging the artist. This change made for an easy day.

I began with board panel 5, because the sun was still in the east and so I could see what lay to the west most readily. I have already worked on panel 7, which is waiting for its companion #6 before I make any more changes to it. I want the panels to line up, panorama-style, although they aren’t quite the right ratio to be true to the width of the scene I’m painting. [I'm calling them "fudged," a confession I will only make at this time. I'm hoping the fudging won't be obvious except to those who know the Amargosa and who will see what's been left out.]

So here’s panel #5, the long slope northwest from the furthest southern end of the desert:

Panel # 5 (The Long Slope), 12 x 16″, oil on board, 2009

It’s a bit rough, particularly in the sky, because at some point putting on new paint simply lifts the old paint. That’s when you have to wait for the oils to dry a bit, so the new paint can get purchase. This is the scene that kept changing on me on Day 9, when I was confused about just how many mountains there were in and around and before and behind the range. I couldn’t see it much better today, but I could work on the best side for seeing what I could see –and I had Day 9′s experience as guidance.

Panel 4 (The First Mountain Crumples), 12 x 16″, oil on masonite, 2009

I’m losing track of what panels have been worked how many times, except I know that panels 2 and 3 were on their multiple versions today:

Panel 3 (The Bluest Blue), 12 x 16″, oil on masonite, 2009

Panel #2 (The south Amargosa Desert), 12 x 16″, oil on masonite, 2009

Finally, after a visit from John and his dog, whose name I now know is “Dream” ( I can remember because she lies down sleepily as we chat), it was late enough that the sun in the west was illuminating the Bare Mountains in the east.

Panel #1  (The Bare Mountains), 12 x 16″, oil on masonite, 2009

Each time I paint the Bare Mountains I find new challenges and new beauty.

Oddly enough the desert, for me, is all about color. These are the original “color fields” although the color is far more subtle than we are accustomed to seeing. They require me to look and look and look again. And then I can scarcely bring myself to hold back and use only the most subtle colors I can make. Many painters push for the spectacular western sunlight on the desert shapes, but I’m finding that my greatest delight now is in finding all the colors, all the versions of single colors, and attempting to place them properly.

The blues on the horizon alone will break your heart — your rational heart because they are human-caused, not desert generated, and your color heart because they can be so beautiful.

A sampling of some of the color that has found its way onto these boards (which will probably be  altered again and again.)

And so, at 4 PM, Jer and the red Honda drove sedately up the curving road to the Barn. I cleaned my brushes, closed the doors, turned off the lights, and took a quick photo of the sunset.

Even the sunset was subtle in color this evening. These are the Grapevine Mountains to the west, beyond which is Death Valley.

Reporting from the Goldwell House, in Beatty Nevada, with a good glass of wine at her side.

Day 12: It’s Raining!, Nov.12, 2009

I didn’t know what the sound was, except that it was extremely strange. The Red Barn, with its tin roof and its kangaroo rat and its tarantula and occasional bird often harbors strange sounds. But this, well, this, this sounded like rain. Pitter patter rain, on a tin roof.

And so it was.

Earlier in the day, a Nye County law enforcement fellow drove up and turned around in the Barn’s gravel parking lot; our conversation was as it should have been. “Hi.” “Nice day” “Looks like rain” “Really?” “Look at the sky.” “Oh.”  “Have a nice day.” He was just doing a drive-by check in and never got out of his car. But I’m blaming the rain on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed.

The early part of the day was warm and sunny enough to change out of my vest and turtle neck into a short sleeved shirt. I wandered around, found a rock for my growing Rock Road, and put it down, thinking as I did that David would like the pink rocks that are to be found everywhere here. They don’t translate in my camera very well, but I’m drawn to them too.

Having wasted all the time I dared to, I started the final masonite panel, small, of course, because I don’t have more than a couple of tablespoons of Liquin.

It’s rather fun at this point to line up the panels. And working inside rather than outside, as I was in Diamond, Oregon, makes the lining up easy.

The brown panel in the center is how the panels all started. I could have gessoed them with white or some other color, but decided that working with that color would emulate the linen color I was going to work with. This is how I began the day’s session — panel 5 was done yesterday. Panel 7 (on the right) was done very early on, perhaps a week or more ago. So this morning, panel 6 was to be inserted.

Except for panel 7, panels 4, 5, and 6 all have north facing mountains. They are the very dickens to discern in any detail. These are the mountains that change form when you walk from one side to the other of the studio doors; at first they seem mostly blue shapes, but if you keep looking, you see shapes inside the shapes, and it finally dawns on you that it isn’t a mountain range; it’s mountains, in front of and behind, other mountains. It can drive the obsessive a bit crazy. Luckily I’m not quite that obsessive. Or maybe I’m crazy enough already.

This is basically the view I see when I look west from the Barn doors. The crumpled clump of mountains at the far right in the photo are the furthest northwest I will go with either panorama. They are somewhat visible. particularly in the early part of the day. The rest are theselovely amorphous colors and shapes, out of which I am determined to find panels 5 and 6.

Of course, I didn’t take a photo of 5 and 6, but rather of 6 and 7, just to show one stage in the development of the painting. Panel 6, on the left, is the last panel to be painted, and it is at its ornery stage, where no more paint can be attached until it gets good and tacky.  It also, alas, reveals the dilemma of the ratio mis-match, but no more will be said of that.

By the time I left, there were masonite 12 x 16 inch panels to accompany all seven of the 4 x 5′ linen panels. I know, I know, there are only 5 here. But linen panels 6 and 7 still await the arrival of that Liquin medium. I painted a bit more with mineral spirits, but they are of limited usefulness.

Then Jer showed up, the rain hit the roof, we looked at each other in wonder, and then we meandered down the road. I regaled him with tales of county sheriffs and he recounted Wikipedia stints. And the sky continued to sound and look like rain. I’ll admit — I never felt a drop, even while locking the three locks on the studio door and marching to the car with my empty water jugs in hand.

Reporting from Beatty, Nevada, where a minute ago, rain sounded again. But now it’s gone. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to investigate the Amargosa River, just half a block away, to see if there’s any water in it.

Day 13: Trauma du Jour, Averted, Nov 13, 2009

Friday the 13th. Which I’ve always, contrariwise, maintained was a good luck day for me. And it was, as my lost Fed Ex package, for which I paid 4 times the actual cost to have two-day shipping and which I desperately needed in order to get on with painting, was found at the Beatty Merc, having been accepted-by-signature by friend George, who owns the place. Fed Ex called at 7:55 this morning to tell me that the package, which I had reported (in a rather heated manner) as not having been delivered in spite of their tracking record saying it had, was at the “Lost River Trading Company.” This is actually the Beatty Mercantile, but Fed Ex hasn’t updated its records, nor its delivery personnel, since last February. But we knew what the LRTC really was and George was just waiting for Jer to show up for groceries to hand it to him.

I could get to work with a full bottle of Liquin:

I use Liquin instead of linseed oil because it dries faster and therefore enables the inept painter to cover up errors more quickly. I brought what I thought was an ample supply, but I didn’t really know enough about the linen and its capability for absorption to work the surface properly. So my supply was depleted, and my first Fed Ex delivery was coming from Wisconsin via China and will arrive next week. Hence the panic about the missing second-day air shipment (with extra costs for hazardous materials). I was imagining losing a full 9 days of working time, and that pushed me to a meltdown worthy of a 3 year old. Luckily Jer averted his eyes.

I also found a bit more titanium white among my supplies; for some reason I brought a lot of zinc white but neglected the titanium. Zinc is a cool white; titanium is a warmer color, and more importantly, is the most opaque of the whites. Finding a bit more was a coup. Next week, when my shipment from Dick Blick in Wisconsin via China arrives, I’ll have a new titanium white to work with.

The non-Soho paints also represent an advance from the Soho paints, which are big tubes full of lots of filler. As they should be, having been bought for so little money. But it’s a bit of relief to have “real” pigment with its greater oomph.

So, after retrieving the Liquin package from George, who chided me for not stopping in more often, I spent the rest of the day getting paint on the Linen panels. They now are fully covered with something.

It’s time to begin painting. There’s a long way to go yet, but not as far as it was yesterday. I am planning on working the skies first (the mountains get worked continuously, as I paint other things) and then re-tack all the panels up about 2 feet and work the desert basin floor. I will be sure to have another adult nearby as I move the panels, because I don’t fancy falling off the ladder without someone to cart me off to the emergency room. The studio is a fine and  private place, but none, do there, I think, have a cell phone that works.

I am also learning about painting on these linen panels, particularly using odorless mineral spirits (the substitute for turpentine). The Gamsol mineral spirits are less toxic than turps and a lot less smelly. They also can be used to cover an area much more evenly, and that seems a real advantage. I can add the detail and the thick paint later; now I just need paint all over the linen — it”s a bit like putting on primer on a precious wall in one’s house.  I’ll undoubtedly find out how I’ve gone wrong as I continue the process.

Late in the day, Richard Stephens  dropped by with another pentatonic flute, this one with a drone — sort of  like a flute bagpipe, where the undertone is a constant bass. Richard can control the amount of drone included in his melodies. I think I need one, but probably without the drone.

As I was looking at the far distance down the Amargosa desert, I saw a bit of blue glow and I swear I heard one of the flute notes that Richard played the other day. His showing up today confirms it — I need to have a pentatonic flute to keep my spirits up as the weather turns chilly.

Other than that, the sun shone, the temps dropped a bit but so long as I kept the north and east doors closed, the sun warmed the studio through the big south doors. The mountains continued their mysterious changes, and I am keeping my exercise gups up trotting back and forth from painting to door to see how this or that slope goes which direction. And where those blasted shadows are now.

Reporting, as usual, from Goldwell House, in Beatty Nevada, which is much warmer than the Barn. But much less picturesque.

Day 14: Desert Tour and the Long Slope, Nov 14, 2009

At 1 PM today, three hours before Jer was scheduled to pick me up, I decided I had chosen the wrong vocation. I would make a much better house painter than fine arts oil painter wannabee. I started the day OK. I hung the little masonite panels, which aren’t finished but which needed to be saved from drips (they were sitting under the big linen panels). They aren’t far from being done, but each needs some final touches. Having hung them, I thought I should work on the skies in the big linen panels. And I decided to begin with the last panel, which can get short shrift, coming after one’s initial enthusiasm has waned. Alas, in looking at the skies, I realized that I had, as I progressed along the seven panels, started to crowd the panels, cramming in more than the landscape ratio should allow. And I had oversized some of the forms. Correcting these errors on the linen was beastly, and can only be done with patience and lots of paint. Paint I have. After running out of patience, knowing only time was going to dry the oils enough to really correct the problems, I started on the skies. Boring. Boring. Boring. I was bored. The skies were boring. The pledge drive on NPR was boring. It was time for a walk. So I put on my coat (over my vest, my turtle neck, my jeans and my long underwear because the weather, while sunny, was roaring with a cold northeast wind), and went out for my daily rock gathering. It’s amazing how a simple thing, like a bit of sun-changed glass in the desert rocks or the shades of blue of the desert distances can rearrange one’s moods:

I wandered about, looking at various human-made cavities in the earth, thinking they might be outhouses or mines or some kind of cellar. I came across a set of rocks arranged in a rectangle and decided they were the “foundation” for one of the tent structures that the miners used so often.

And I marveled at the lavender color of a pile of crushed rock, probably from some stamp mill process:

As the sun goes to the west, the colors of everything begin to glow; even at 1:30, the light becomes magic. So, collecting the rock for my rock road, I went back to the Barn studio and tackled more skies — yards and yards of skies. In the process, I used my magic tool (some kind of rubbery clay gadget, I think) to deal with what I think of as the Long Slope. The Long Slope is a boring mountain range that faces north and can scarcely be seen as anything but a long irregular shape, blankly boringly blue, in the distance: This is what I have done to it to try to bring out what I can see for about 12 minutes (if I look at the right 12 minutes) during the day:

(The vertical blue stripe is the tape that will be removed so these panels can be stretched on stretcher bars).

The Long Slope goes across one whole panel and parts of two others. This “play” with the rubbery shaping tool may make it tolerable. So I finished out the day playing with my skies and feeling much more cheerful. Jer and I greeted yet another tarantula, and admired the Bullfrog Hills just west of the barn. I’m extremely fond of these bare mountains. They seem glorious, like bare human flesh. Even in this photo, taken at midday, they charm me.

Reporting cheerfully, on a Saturday night, in Beatty, Nevada.

Day 15: The Masonite Studies, Nov 15, 2009

from Mary Shelley’s comments in Part II of her Rambles in Germany and Italy: Were I exiled, perforce, I might repine, for the heart naturally yearns for home. But to adorn that home with recollections, to fly abroad from the hive, like a bee, and return laden with the sweets of travel-scene, which haunt the eye — wild adventures, that enliven the imagination — knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging, deadening prejudices — a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow creatures; these are the uses of travel.

The quote above, taken from Wikipedia, describes something of my mood at the moment. It was a slow starting day and a fast ending one: I didn’t begin until 9:30 and Jer showed up at 3 to pick me up. I also did a lot of work sitting down. I now have an even better masonite board panorama, and more ideas to play with with the linen. I spent the entire day with the masonite boards on a table, where they weren’t subject to glare from the open Barn doors. And I reworked them to add more shadows, more blending of the skies, and differently toned basin floors. Here they are, panels 1 through 7, each 12 x 16″, plus the line-up, 16 x 84″.  I see that I need to go back to some of the ideas I had earlier. and keep some I had today. Anyway, here are today’s results:

The hues are enhanced with more golds in the later panels, and the contrasts deepened. The colors here aren’t quite right, particularly on  some panels. but you get the idea. Here’s the whole panorama: These are Jer’s photos, taken with bad  lighting and worse glare and manipulated in Photoshop Elements from memory, rather than with the paintings in front of me. So I know (or at least I’m hoping) that the actual work is more subtle and more varied than the computer shows.  I had no visitors today, neither human nor other critters, except for some house sparrows which seem to be flying on a tour. Reported from Beatty Nevada, where yawns are starting to accrue.

Day 16: Raising the levels, Nov.16, 2009

It’s no wonder painters are thought to be a bit mad. This is an up-and-down business. Last night, after looking at the masonite panel photos on the web, I went into despair. I had done them under a window on a white table. They were without glare, but definitely garish. I woke up thinking dark thoughts. However, I began my Studio Monday by cleaning up my mineral spirits. When in doubt, scrub (metaphorically speaking) the floor. Something about clean mineral spirits always lifts mine — gets rid of the sludge, both literally and metaphorically. So I tackled the panels again, rehearsing my cool AM light/ warm PM light and got rid of most of the foreground elements (the garish ones in particular) on the right hand side, where the scenes start in the middle distance and go back from there. I doodled a bit on the left. Here are the latest versions of Board Panels 1 and 2 (both AM, on the right) The Amargosa desert

The Amargosa Desert (Panel #2), 12 x 16, oil on masonite, 2009

I got rid of the oogie foreground flowers in both these panels, and they are better for it, believe me. And when I finished with that, I started in on the big linen panels.

I needed to get the skies done so I can raise the panels so I can do the mid/fore grounds without laying down on the floor. For some odd reason, this morning I used “real” oils instead of the cheap ones that I had brought to start the project (maybe because by now it’s a bit late to be thinking of “starting.”) What a difference a good paint makes! The linen panels got covered. The skies, while perhaps not completely done, are done enough that they can be left to mix a bit with one another while I do the foreground (on the left) and the mid-ground (on the right). The addition of deep shadow on the left of the masonite panels makes me think that might work well with the linen ones also.

Here’s the first raisings: The panels look better raised; they are more centered to the eye. So it will be fun to see them now that I will be using good paint and a better viewpoint. Unlike the masonite panels, these aren’t facing much glare, which makes painting easier, and the colors better. I also fixed some other oogie places on the linens, which gave me a great sigh of relief.

Tomorrow I will raise the rest of the panels (I stopped with three today). I didn’t want to raise the rest unless Jer was nearby because I don’t feel all that confident about standing on a ladder above a concrete floor out of hearing, sight, and knowledge of other human beings. But he’ll stick around tomorrow until I finish getting them up. (He’ll volunteer to raise them, but his clothes are not all covered with paint; mine are. Raising linen paintings fulsome with wet paint isn’t exactly a tidy task.) The weather got warmer today, so I could remove my coat (but not my vest, my turtleneck, nor my long underwear). Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, and I’m thinking of doing a quick jaunt for some plein air down the valley. I want to paint some parts of the Bare Mountain that are blocked from view at the Barn by the mine tailings from the Barrick Gold mine leftovers. Here are a couple of close-up photos of the Bare Mountains that we took on the way home this evening.

I’m a bit reluctant to take time away from the big linen panels for the plein air work, but I’ve had a special request and the weather isn’t going to get much better than this. And the colors are irresistible, particularly as the sun is just setting. Reporting, after pizza at the Sourdough Saloon, from the Goldwell House, in Beatty, Nevada.

 

Day 17: Raise High the Linen Panels, Nov 17,2009

There I am, heroically affixing the last tack to the seventh panel, while Jer takes the photo in panic, hoping I won’t fall off the ladder. It’s only a two-step step-stool, and has a nice handle to lean one’s knees on, but this is not a position my vestibular system is fond of. On the other hand, Jer was not eager to paint his bald pate (buzzcut #2) to the dangers of wet oil paint. So I tacked and he handed me the hammer and took the photo of the last bang. Note the bottom of the panel in this photo. And then remember it as I show you what the panels looked like toward the end of today:

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Linen Panels 2, 3, and 4, November 17, 2009

Linen Panels 5, 6, & 7, November 17 2009

The panel on the right is the one I was tacking up in the first photo. As it seems to now be well in hand, I think that it’s possible that I will be able to accomplish my mission — not that she painted well, but that she painted it at all — that’s the goal. Raising the panels really put their centers near my eye level (a bit too low for Jer) and improved the way they looked, even before I got the bottoms worked up a bit. Working the bottoms felt easy, compared to what I’ve  been doing, perhaps because I know a bit more about working linen. Do you know there is no advice about painting on linen canvas to be found on the web, aside from the need to gesso it and the fact that it’s nice strong stuff? I think I might have been as happy with cotton canvas, clear gessoed, but hind-sight is easy to come by. I’m also using real paints and, as I reported earlier, that makes a big difference. So I came home this evening feeling like I could really actually do what I set out to do. And while it might not be a masterpiece (it certainly isn’t now), I will have scratched the itch to paint big quite well. No desert photos this evening. And tomorrow, I’m going to paint in town, a bit of plein air just to change the scene. Also the furnace company is supposed to come by, so Jer will be sure to be here to let them in. Nevada is definitely warmer than Portland, but not that much warmer. I’m hoping the wind doesn’t blow too hard to keep the boards on the easel. And to keep my ears warm from the sun. Reporting from Beatty, Nevada, replete with oil paint and mac and cheese, and content.

Day 18: Nada: Nov 18, 2009

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took the day off. Spent all morning futzing around on the computer, answering emails, cleaning up files, labeling images. And the afternoon, after the furnace guy left telling us not to burn the house down (and not fixing the furnace neither), I went off to the town library, a hexagonally shaped creature, and painted it. Got to chat up some kids, which is always fun. Then I went down the street and painted the back of Suzie and Riley’s house, which was once a church and still has its steeple with a wind vane on top. That was fun, although it had to be a quick sketch as the sun was threatening to set and the cold was settling into my bones. I didn’t bother to photograph the paintings — they are too weird and I’m tired of photographing things that discourage me. Once I diddle them, I’ll post them. The library was awfully static (and strange colored ) and while the church-residence was fun, it didn’t have enough contrast to be useful. Can it be that I’m getting picky about my wacky city-scapes? At least I have another small-town library to add to my collection of Condon, Baker City, and other places I can’t remember — ah, the East Portland Branch Public Library, now turned offices for security businesses and other such city folk. And I’m on my last bottle of Portland wine, alas. Oh dear. I hope the painting looks good when I get back to the Barn tomorrow. Reporting from a perfectly toasty Goldwell House, where chicken is in the oven and the potatoes are baked and done. We can always retreat to the Atomic Inn if necessary, but right now, “things” seem OK. It was a gorgeous day in Beatty, like one of those October days in northern Pennsylvania, where the middle of the afternoon makes you remember summer, but in an instant, the clear brisk light wind reminds you — it’s really on its way to colder times.

Day 19: Breakthrough, Nov. 19, 2009

My day off  from the Red Barn and the  Big Honking Painting worked wonders. The middle three panels, 3, 4 & 5, were the least defined — in my head as well as by my hand. A couple of people dropped by today, which was quite pleasant. While John and his dog Dream sat and told me stories and slept (Dream, that is), I painted. And when John asked me what I had in mind for the central panel # 4, the answer popped out before I consciously knew what it was. And it was the right answer. After he left, I also saw what had begun to happen in panel #5, right next to the central #4, and realized I could mirror image it, with different color and temperature on #3. So the central panel 4 would be sandwiched by somewhat mirroring images on 3 and 5. Here they are, as they appeared about 3 PM this afternoon:

Linen Panel #3, November 19, 2009 9 (left/east side of center)

Linen Panel #4, November 19, 2009 (central panel)

Linen Panel #5, November 19, 2009 (right/west side of center)

What I realized is that the central panel, #4, should show that moment in the desert day when everything is suspended, nothing moves, the world is held, silent and waiting. Panels 3 and 5 then could move, directional. So I worked color to make foreground diagonals from right to left on panel 3 and from left to right on panel 5. This pulls the three panels apart in some ways, working like a variation of linear perspective but with color rather than line. And these diagonals are interrupted by the central suspension. The colors on the right, toward the west, are lemony and those on the right, toward the east, are rosy, but they both are lighter than the surrounding desert greens and browns and grays. More needs to be done (always) but at last I have a clear sense of each 4 x 5 panel and what I’m hoping to have it evoke. Now all I have to do is keep painting until I get where I want to go.

There are a few dozen other changes and tweaks and twiddles that need doing, but they will happen, I hope, within the next two weeks. Reporting from the Goldwell house in Beatty, Nevada.

Day 20: Half Way To Home, Nov 20, 2009

And it feels just fine. I had a short day, thinking I might catch a bit of plein air work, but by the time Jer showed up, it was blowing too hard. So, wind wimp that I am, I came back to Beatty and played with a painting in the foyer of the house (the foyer has windows on 3 sides, is about 9 feet square, and has not yet been fixed up any, which makes it perfect for painting in.) A good, quiet,  but satisfying day. This morning, I worked a bit more on the central panels, pushing the color direction a bit.  They needed toned down after that, but I didn’t want to muddy them too much, so I moved to the outer panels to let the central ones dry. These went well. You’ve seen a version of Panel 1, but this one is updated today:

And this is Panel 7, also worked today:

The latter is hugely different from what it has been, and it is now a companion to #1, as it should be. The others also have been changed, but not so much. And lest you think I spend all my time inside, here’s some Red Barn Art, photos I took while I waited for Jer this afternoon.

This last photo is looking toward the Goldwell Open Air Museum (the pink bit in the upper right is Lady Venus); the stainless steel pile is the fallen over sculpture which one of these days will be raised again. I think it will make a great addition to the Barn’s yard. The Writer’s Almanac today quoted author Nadine Gordimer, who said,

“ People make the mistake of regarding commitment as something solely political. A writer is committed to trying to make sense of life. It’s a search. So there is that commitment first of all: the commitment to the honesty and determination to go as deeply into things as possible, and to dredge up what little bit of truth you with your talent can then express.

I  think that what I am trying to do is to dredge up what little bit of truth I can, and express it. That’s my commitment.

Day 21: Sometimes a Great Notion, Nov. 21, 2009

This was a hard-working day at the Studio. I didn’t mean it to be — I just kept seeing  More To Be Done. I worked the center panels, particularly the central one, very hard today, using Liquin as if it were water. I also got to use my spatula-like tool, of which I’m very fond, and which makes specific kinds of marks on canvas. It doesn’t work on masonite board at all.

The “spatula” (actually I found it with clay shaping tools) is on the left and the goo is what my palette looked like. There’s a palette knife in there, also, which came in handy. I worked with those tools and then put them aside and started what I can only describe as a kind of drip process: load the brush with lots of Liquin medium and some indefinite paint and lay a line down the canvas:

I didn’t get photos of the really good gooey places, but this is an example. After I laid down a bunch of medium and paint, I went back over the lines with a big brush, dispersing the materials. This method actually worked better than just brushing the paint on the canvas.

This is after the goo has been distributed. I had both violet and paynes gray on my brushes, so they came out varying themselves nicely.

The Great Notion occurred about 3:30. I had been at it since 9 and was more than a little tired. So I thought I’d clean up and wait for Jer at 4. I was standing at the door of the barn. Suddenly, I saw one set of mountains more clearly than I had ever seen them before.

The sun was just right for the shadows to pull out the forms individually. They were beautiful. I admired them for minute, took out my camera and bemoaned its inability to photograph what I could see so clearly. I was standing there wishing there were some way I could record the mountains as they were at that moment, when it suddenly dawned on me — I had been fussing at painting them for weeks and never could see them clearly. I dashed back to the palette (a version of the one above), scrambled for color and started making marks all over the dull blue shapes that I had thought were the best I was going to get for those particular forms. Here’s a “before”  shot, when I thought I was finished for the day (this was cropped from a much larger photograph, so it’s fuzzy. But you’ll get the idea.)

And here’s what I left the studio with this evening, having thrown paint at those forms, running from open door to the painting wall, back and forth, trying to make do with the paint on my palette so I could catch the shapes before they became mere silhouettes in front of the setting sun:

What made me laugh at myself was thinking about that moment before I thought of trying to capture the forms, when I was wishing there were some way to show what these mountains look like on November 21 at 3:37 until 3:59 PM.

The moment just before the Great Notion — “Paint them, dummy! Duh.”

Day 22: Working the Center, Nov 22, 2009

A shortish day today. Lots of visitors, including old friends Fred and Betty, from last February, when they kept an eye on me from  Rhyolite, where they were caretakers. It was good to see them again; we spent a  couple hours just catching up. It was Fred and Betty with whom we traveled down Titus Canyon in March, a memorable trip. But I did do some work: here are the tools of the day — palette knife and ancient brush.

I discovered with canvas that I could smear paint with the palette knife — very gooey paint, not meant to stand in nice ridges and icing-like curves, but just to slightly randomly lay down a streak of paint:

This streak then got brushed with the ancient tatted brush which no longer can hold paint — hence all it does is brush out what’s there.

Using the palette knife and old brush gives a very different look to the paint layer than brushing it on conventionally or laying it on so it dripped, as I did yesterday. The variety in layered looks enhances the variations that I hope will keep people looking further. What I didn’t say yesterday, in that description of the frantic ten minutes trying to capture the  mountain forms, was that I spent most of the day working the center panel, and when I finished it was covered, layered, thickly saturated with a very light mottled pinkish beige. Jer’s honest opinion, pulled out of him reluctantly, was also mine, although I was hoping he’d contradict it. It was too much, too light, too out of character, too, too, too excessive. So here’s yesterday’s center panel, followed by today’s. More Must Be Done:

Center Panel, November 21.

Center Panel, Nov 22.

It’s hard to evaluate these panels separately, although my fond hope is that each will stand on its own in the end. But to see how the center one looked with its companion on either side yesterday and today, here are a couple of photos.

Panels 3, 4, and 5, Nov. 21

Panels 3, 4, and 5, Nov 22

Granting the difference in lighting conditions (depends on where the sun is at any given photo op

), I am definitely happier with November 22.  Seen with the other four panels, the toning down of the center was essential, and it will probably get more. I wrote down what I hoped for in this six week painting excursion. 1. That the whole would fit together harmonously — that the panels would form a unity; 2. That each panel would make a statement by itself, would be a painting that could stand on its own; and 3. that the panels would balance out, that none would push the others out of sight or diminish itself into nothingness.

I have (had?) other goals — that it would take more than a single 30 second look to get through this scene and that the casual observer would be tempted to walk along the panels and look at them more closely; that I could manage quirky light so that the close observer would understand it but the casual observer wouldn’t be daunted by the quirks; and that it wouldn’t be so boringly conventional as to give the attentive art observer the yawns.

The only thing I think I have at the moment for sure is balance –  the seven panels feel precisely the right weight to me. I hope that feeling continues. Some of the panels are pretty good paintings; some are not. The whole is definitely not achieved yet. As for how others will react, well, all I can do is my best and then let the viewers decide, individually, as they take a look. The reaction thus far has been mixed, but then, the paintings thus far have been mixed. Tomorrow is Monday and I will begin again. Reporting from the Goldwell House in Beatty, Nevada, where the Sutter’s Home wine is just fine after a day of painting and socializing.

Day 23: Another Direction,  Nov. 23, 2009

Where do I start? One day is much like another, only different, and each day seems to bring new revelations. At least each does when I’m paying attention. This morning, I worked over that central panel, again. I realized that, as it was painted, it looked as if a gap existed between the mountains — where none in reality exists. That’s because I was painting those north facing mountains that are so hard to see. They basically got slopped into some sort of shape, but not really observed.

So, I got to do my dance from wall to door to wall to door, dripping paint as I sallied forth, again and again and again. In the end (about noon) I was satisfied at last that what I’ve been calling The Long Slope, which never shows its definition, was about as good as it would get. I had properly closed the gap in the center panel, which shouldn’t have been there to begin with.

Linen Panel #4, November 23, 2009

But more important than dealing with the mountains was another insight crept slowly but surely into my consciousness as the morning progressed. Late yesterday Jer and I drove west on a gravel road that ultimately turned north. We were driving along the Bullfrog Hills, which jumble themselves crossways between the big ranges, Bare Mountain and the Grapevine Range.  These are the hills that cuddle Rhyolite, the ghost town up the road, and one of which is directly behind the Red Barn studio. They continue, in a kind of informal, helter-skelter way until they  bump into the Grapevine mountains, the range that runs pretty much north and south along  Death Valley. I was tired and not paying much attention to the scenery, when Jer stopped to take a photo.

As I sat looking out the front window of the car, I suddenly realized I was seeing what was, for me, totally new and unknown territory, the kind of thing that can give a tired mind a bit of frisson, a little anxiety about being way out beyond the known. I got out of the car then and looked back down the road we had traveled for the last half hour.

There was the whole of the Amargosa Valley, looking the same as ever, just like it did when I stood in open doors of the Barn. Oh there were some differences I could count up, but really, after going far west and far north, we were still in the Amargosa Desert. Which brings me to my revelation. While the Amargosa Desert and the Amargosa Valley converge down around Beatty, the Amargosa Desert goes north and west, staying between the Bare Mountains and the Grapevines until it bumps into the Bullfrog hills. The Amargosa Valley, however, with its trickle of a river, has come directly from the north through the gap between the Bullfrogs and Bare Mountains. It has its origins in Oasis Valley, coming out the Timber Range, farther east than the Bare Mountains. The desert is a much bigger, more open, vaster space than the valley.

The far right panels of mountains that I had been painting were still very much a part of the desert that is seen in the first, far left panel; the valley only exists in the first two panels.

What this did to my head — and hence to the painting — was make me realize that I had to pull that desert sense clear across all the panels — not just allow the mountains to draw nearer but to continue the desert fully into the space. The Red Barn does not exist at the head of the Amargosa Desert, although it’s close to the head of the Amargosa Valley. So, with this insight becoming more and more clear to me, I recognized how I could deal with another problem that had been bugging me. The panel (#2) with the gap in the mountains where the Amargosa River goes through them  had been painted early and was a pretty good panel. Too good, in fact. Its brightness drew the eye in ways that I didn’t want but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about. I didn’t know what I would do with that panel if it didn’t go so glowingly into the distance:

This is Linen panel #2, November 20, 2009

And here’s the change that I made to it:

Linen Panel #2 November 23, 2009

What I want is for the desert to go west, not south. So here’s something of what I did with the panels to the west of #2:

Panels 2, 3, 4, and 5, November 23, 2009 Another view: Panels 2, 3, and 4, November 23, 2009

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Panels 2, 3, and 4, November 23, 2009

My hope is to push the color west (right) instead of having it pull the eye totally into the center of panel 2. That will (I say, crossing my fingers) pull the viewer’s eye across the panels rather than stopping with panel 2. Moreover, the flatness of the center panel (more mottled than yesterday but still without much depth) makes sense as a flat desert “void,” not trending much of anywhere. Just there. The color will continue on, but the width of panel 4 flattens the space.

I’m not sure this is making any sense to anyone but myself. But recognizing the difference between the vastness of the desert and the small part of it that makes up the valley made me see the space that I was painting differently.

Driving along the Bullfrog Hills, into territory that looked totally unlike any I had seen, and then looking back at the absolutely familiar space of my quotidian told me that I had been painting as if I were the center of the universe. Now I’ve know, viscerally, that the universe of the Amargosa Desert goes far beyond me and my eyesight. So should my painting give, at least hints, that there’s more.

And of course, More Must Be Done.

A postscript:  to be fair to my own inaccurate perception, I grew up in the Susquehanna Valley beside the Susquehanna River, and I now live in the Willamette Valley, 14 blocks or so from the Willamette River. These Valleys were carved, in part, by their rivers. The Amargosa Desert was created by the earth pulling the continent apart; the water that drifts down part of it just happened to find a low spot and sink there, temporarily. It reappears at the south end of the valley, makes a sharp turn north, and sinks, permanently, into Death Valley. Unlike the river valleys with which I am most familiar, the Amargosa is unoriented in its space.

Day 24: Short Day with Evaluation, Nov. 24, 2009

I got up slowly and moved slowly and sipped my coffee slowly, and did desultory emails but finally, slowly, went off to the studio about 10:30 AM.

I thought, since it was already too late to do anything serious, that I would try setting up the internet connection at the Red Barn. Jer and I had thought we’d use it for communicating (cell phones don’t work out there) but it seemed like too much bother to set up before this. And it was just as well, since I couldn’t get it to work anyway. “Airport” and Microsoft don’t like to connect. I didn’t work very hard at my attempts, mostly just drank my tea and thought about Life, Love, and the pursuit of nothing:

At some point, however, I realized that I had a photo of a place I had done a painting study from and the painting needed work. So I hauled out my brushes and used the computer to give me information that my memory lacked.

This is the Bare Mountains from near the Airport:

The Bare Mountains from Near the Beatty Airport, 16 x 12″, oil on masonite, 2009

These mountains have a striking uplift pattern as they progress south, but near Beatty, as they come to an end, they get a bit jumbled. This is the jumbled end.

Then, having my paintbrush in hand, I meandered over to the linen panels to see what I could see. I put a bit of paint here, and there, and then over here, and then there again. And when I stopped dabbing and scratching, I saw that I had created a satisfying pattern, something missing until this moment. T

I haven’t had any critical eyes approach it yet, and I’m still too close to know if it’s done, but right now, I’m thinking I’m close to the finish line on the linen. The last piece fell into place when I found that I was making “V” and upside-down “V” shapes — diagonals that crossed the panels, pulling them together and giving them some movement. I maintained the quirks of light, but they are downplayed. The forms seem Ok, and the colors move, which is about all one can ask of them. I may need to push more paint around — I can’t tell right now. But this is the version of the seven panels as I left them tonight:

The Amargosa Desert, panels 1,2, and 3, about 12′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

The Amargosa Desert, panels 3, 4, and 5, about 12′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

The Amargosa Desert, panels 5, 6, and 7, about 12′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

The colors are really screwed up in these photos, so they don’t match up. The last set of panels is darker and brighter, a combo that I couldn’t photoshop with any success. The first set of panels is brighter and more saturated, but again, nothing I did brought about a desired result. But the “v” shapes seem to me to be able to be read, in spite of the size of the panels. The whole is balanced and unified. I think there’s enough variety, although that may depend on your definition of variety; the desert is like that….

And so, I stopped work on the panels, touched up another painting, washed out my brushes, and started a semi-abstract of a salt flat, which are about as abstract as one can get and still do landscape. It will require overpainting once it’s dry, so it was good to get the first layer down.

Tomorrow is supposed to be pleasant weatherwise, and I need to get away from the desert (and those linen panels), so I think I’ll paint in town a bit. And go to the Beatty Merc to stock up for Thanksgiving. We are having guests — who are bringing most of the food. What better guests can there be than that?

Reporting from Goldwell House, in Beatty, Nevada, two days before turkey-day. Barbecued, no less. We don’t do barbecue for Thanksgiving in Portland, so it will be a rare treat.

Day 25: No Desert, Nov 25, 2009

No desert painting today. I stayed in Beatty, fooled around  at the House this morning, and painted in town this afternoon. I haven’t any photos of the paintings, but I must report that it was something like 70 degrees and (what else) sunny, today. Even the wind cooperated (which means the sun and wind allowed the masonite board to be sideways, not front on, to the wind, which was blowing as if I were painting in a desert!).

I painted the Chamber of Commerce Building (right beside the Rebel gas station, which must be the busiest place in town).  It’s my usual choice of wacky, but includes Beatty Mountain, allowing me to show the other side of my painting personality:

The Beatty Chamber of Commerce Building, November, 2009

I know it will disappoint those of you who love the unintelligible,but I left out the orange post in the middle. And I crammed a whole lot of Beatty Mountain, much more grandly presented into the painting. (That’s how it looks to the eye, rather than to the camera) And also, alas, I had to include the car, but left out the tin bin behind the building. When Things Settle Down, I will work up the painting and present it for your edification.

I also painted the Phoenix Inn (to be renamed the “Atomic Inn”)  for which we have a nostalgic and storied fondness. For one thing, the proprietor gives a discount to Goldwell artists (I think David, a board member, sweet talked him into it). He (the proprietor) also bought one of my paintings last February, and who can help but love a patron. And then, there’s the wondrous design of the buildings themselves; I like those triangular, open concrete widgets:

The Phoenix (Atomic) Inn, Beatty, Nevada, November 2009

I was there not more than an hour ago, finishing my painting, and while I painted, the sun did its western thing, and below is the scene I frantically tried to capture as the sun was going down. There’s about ten minutes of light like this — Jer and I often catch it just as we return from the barn.The mountain lights up unbelievably. I think I could do a Cezanne-like obsession with Beatty Mountain:

[Image of Beatty Mountain seems to have disappeared from the Archives]

Reporting from the Goldwell House in Beatty, Nevada, the night before Thanksgiving, when the air was balmy and the whole town seemed to be out and about.

Oh, and just a note: there will be no journal entry tomorrow. We are “hosting” our hosts, Suzanne and Charles and Sammie Hackett-Morgan, who are the movers and shakers (and, I think, originators) of the Goldwell Open Air Art Museum. And when I say hosting, I put it in “quotes” because they are bringing the food, the entertainment and themselves. And they’ve also enlisted Suzy and Riley McCoy to come along. The McCoys volunteer at the Museum’s Building, out near where I paint. They too are bringing goodies. So “hosting” in this case is definitely figure of speech. We are being hosted, down to a good bottle of wine and stories of New Orleans. The Goldwell folks are a classy lot.

Day 26 & 27:  Turkey Days, Nov. 26 & 27, 2009

After 25 days of intense daily painting, I took two days off — for the feting and the feasting provided by Suzanne and Charles Hackett-Morgan, Goldwell Board Directors, and Suzy and Riley McCoy, Goldwell volunteers. Sammie, the eight year old, came along with Suzanne and Charles, and provided us all with joyful, well-mannered kidling times. It was glorious.

I have to show a few photos before I admit to what Suzanne and Charles’ eyes saw in the paintings I’ve been laboring over.

The day started when Jer and I took a walk along the Amargosa, which had running water in it, as well as guppies. This is the ford where the street behind Valley goes across the river, all two inches of it. It was a beautiful fall day, with the cottonwoods glowing golden. Then our hosts arrived, bringing the dinner and Sammie with them.

Here’s Sammie in the great climbing tree outside the Goldwell House. He brought DVDs of Ratatouille and Night at the Museum to watch, and because I hadn’t seen Night at the Museum, after Thanksgiving dinner he insisted we watch it, even though he had already seen it once during the day (and many times at home, I’m sure). What a charmer. He also beat Jer at a variety of board games, including chess, and had some card tricks that I’m not sure I understood. Which might have been the point.

Suzanne had pre-prepared an herbed brined turkey for the grill (and pies and cranberries and sparkling drinks etc); Charles spent a lot of time blowing on the coals to get them to the proper glowing status:

That’s Riley behind Charles’ head, telling Suzanne some talk or some joke

And here’s Suzanne, holding the grill up so Charles can add more charcoal.

The turkey was superb. The dressing divine. The pies exquisite. The chocolate dipped strawberries astonishing. There was more food than twenty of us could have eaten and more stories and good conversation than a host of poet laureates could have provided. We talked about Goldwell and where it might go, now that it’s so well established. Lots of ideas got tossed around, and Jer and I got to express our appreciation of what we’ve had available here.

Jer, Suzanne, Suzy, Riley and Charles (Sammie was at the kid’s table — ie the coffee table — as this table wouldn’t hold another person.

This may be my best photo. This shows last night’s remains of one of two large platters, provided by Suzie, of these fresh California strawberries  dipped in chocolate. Jer and I ate the last two for today’s mid-afternoon snacks.

This morning, we chatted more, divvied up the left-overs (we didn’t squabble over the turkey, as Suzanne was really generous, and I not only had pie for breakfast, but she left some behind so I could have it for dinner too). Then Suzanne, Charles, and I went out to the Barn, where we looked at my paintings, they showed me how to work the lights and then set them up so they shone on the art properly, we got to a cup of coffee from Suzie and Riley at the Museum building and admired the desert from their vista, and then the Hackett-Morgans loaded the Jeep and went back home, to do some art for an exhibit they are in next weekend. Jer and I delivered some goodies to Suzie and Riley, with a stop-off at the town dump. We came back home, I took a nap, and then we went back to the Barn to see if the expected rain might come through the roof onto the paintings. We decided it would not, but I got to take a couple of glorious sunset photos.

I’m thinking of this as my Turkey After-glow.

Oh, and about the painting critique — well, I’ll describe it tomorrow. It was right on the mark, with both Suzanne and Charles describing areas that I had been working on at the end and thinking might need a bit more work. Only one small surprise. So Turkey-glow, indeed.

Reporting from the Goldwell House, at the Goldwell Open Air Museum’s Residency Program, full of contentment and wonder at the graciousness of the people here.

Day 28: It Was A Dark and Stormy Day, Nov 28, 2009

Well, it wasn’t exactly dark — just amazingly, wondrously, hideously, wildly stormy. I’d add more adjectives, but Jer won’t let me. It was also teeth chattering cold, but I couldn’t resist having the big barn doors open to watch the sky and desert as the storms came and went.

I was at the Barn at the usual time today. There were tourists everywhere, including a couple of trailer-campers on the other side of the road. I guess these were holiday-seekers who didn’t want to pay to park their rigs. People kept dropping in to see the art — Riley McCoy, the museum volunteer, was sending them along. He stopped by while a couple from the LA area were being chatted up by David Lancaster and I was chatting up the other David (Berg), a board member who was helping David L. work on the cistern. Riley handed me a bagful of fresh strawberries and the wind and rain started.

So when people weren’t pulling up out front, I played my new flute (more on that another time) and thought about painting. I didn’t actually think much; I mostly thought about thinking. And I played my flute. And someone else would pull up to get in out of the rain, which wasn’t actually hitting the ground, only the roof. Between the talk, the flute and the jingling of the tin roof, it was fairly exciting.

About 2 PM things settled down, so I decided to work on some easy stuff — the plein air panels I did a few days ago.

Here’s the back of the McCoy’s house, which was the Episcopalian Church. It’s the back of the house because I was painting in the afternoon and the house faces east. All glare and deep shadow on that side. Besides, looming over the back of the house is a honking big sign for Motel 6, next to the Casino up the road aways, and that tickled my sense of wacky hamlet-scapes. So this is today’s version, a second draft:

The McCoy’s House, Beatty Nevada, 16 x 12″, Oil on masonite 2009

I also updated the Beatty Library a bit:

Beatty, Nevada, Public Library, 16 x 12″, Oil on masonite, 2009

It’s absolutely typical of my wacky hamlet-scapes, perhaps because I’ve been painting landscapes too long. They get wackier as I get further out of practice.

That didn’t take long, so I decided to take on another painting I did outside in the warmth (now dissipated entirely, it seems) of last week.

The Phoenix Motel (missing its trees), draft 2, 16 x 12″, oil on masonite, 2009

This one needs the mountain to glow more; it was painted about 4 PM and the motel was in shadow while the mountain was playing on my eyeballs. But it’s coming along.

I couldn’t bring myself to upgrade the Chamber of Commerce Building (another view of the Beatty Mountain included); the wheeled vehicle seemed too hard. So I started in on a semi-abstract (think Maynard Dixon with no horses or humans) that I had been working on last week. I’m liking the change of pace –less detail:

Salt Flats  near Beatty Nevada, 16 x 12″, Oil on masonite, 2009

I had just begun on the far mountains when Jer appeared, so this too will get a bit more attention.

I couldn’t face the big canvases today, but tomorrow I will be brave and valiant and true-hearted and strong. Besides they must be painted so they can dry before they get carried home. And Charles fixed the spot lights so I can see to paint more better as well as to photograph better (probably more, too). With any luck (send good vibes this way) I’ll have them done within a day or two.

On the way home, I made Jer stop so I could take this photo of the continuing storm.

I thought all those painters who showed the sunlight streaming from the clouds were making it up <snort>

Reporting from Goldwell House, which is much warmer and cozier than the Red Barn, even if the scenery is less spectacular.

Day 29: Unoriented, Nov. 29, 2009

I told Jer this morning that I should be able to “finish” these canvases in another two days. Tonight I’m not so sure. But I’m not going to show any more photos of them until I’m fairly confident that I’ve done as much as I can see to do.

I spent an hour this afternoon (when my eyes and brain could no longer deal with painting itself) reflecting on what I had wanted to achieve and what factors were involved in getting me to this stage of the work. I wrote these “reflections” down in my notebook, knowing that by this evening I’d be totally clueless as to what I was thinking at 2:30 PM.

It’s very nice to have a good notebook, even though when I read back through this month’s entries, I often haven’t a clue what I was talking about.

Recently I wrote: “The (dis/un) orientation of shadows.”  I know what that phrasing refers to. I have a large shadow advancing across the desert basin in one direction, while on the bluff that intersects it, the foliage has shadows going the other way.

One of my goals was to un-orient the landscape, to prevent it from being readily understood (hence readily dismissed). At the same time, I’m painting “representationally” so the shadows are definitely shadows, even if dis/un oriented.

But in a way, I am well oriented. A huge factor in being able to accomplish as much as I have is the set-up in which I am working.

The Red Barn, while only 4 miles from the 1000-population town of Beatty, is over the Bullfrog Hills from the hamlet. You look west and see the mountains that line Death Valley. East from the Barn you  see the Bare Mountains that terminate at Beatty, but not Beatty itself. I didn’t know how important the clear unstructured view of the Basin was until a group of vacationers set up camp across from the Barn. They were only there a few days, but suddenly my sense of space was totally disrupted. I waved them good-by this morning.

The Barn doors have been open every day I’ve worked here (I think I missed about five days in the Barn out of the 29 I’ve been in Beatty.)  This openness is miraculous:  for the most part, it adds to the comfort; the north wind doth blow, but the sun comes in the doors from the south and heats the place. But more than that, it allows me to feel myself part of the desert, yet sheltered from the worst of wind and sun and dryness. Maybe that’s cheating, but it has made painting these canvases relatively comfortable, even possible, given their sizes.

Another factor is the isolation and consistency with which I can work. I don’t drive, so Jer drops me off at 9 and picks me up at 4. We have no way to communicate, so if I’m brain-dead at 2, I still have two hours to fill (and no bed to nap in) before he’ll arrive to pick me up. My days are all pretty much the same. I do have the occasional visitor, and half a mile or so away is the road to the ghost town, so I see distant vehicles going by, too far to hear unless they are a cavalcade of motorcycles. There are volunteers at the Museum building, who sometimes come by, and an occasional Beatty friend shows up. But mostly I have days like today, when the greatest excitement arrives when a crow gives me a shout-out and a big RV turns around in front of the Barn.

I am not entirely isolated, yet I have hours and hours of total insulation in which to work and think. I can’t stop without being confronted with the canvases, which stare at me as I drink my diet soda. They always draw me back to painting. Now I have my new pentatonic flute to occupy me, but it gets mucked up with spit and starts to sound dreary after a little, so back I go to the canvases. The canvases are always there, waiting, patiently, but needing more work.

One observation I hadn’t expected is that mostly all I have to work with here is color. Shape and form are simple and small. All the rest is moved and directed and oriented (or dis/un-oriented) by color. This isn’t usually the case for me, and it’s really made me see and work on color. I still have one last big color problem to sort out — tomorrow if possible.

This insistence on color means that everything I look at now has specific meaning for me in its color — the lavenders, the pinks, the red ochres, the grays that are undercoated with red ochre, the rhyolites and slates; moreover, the sun imposes itself on every surface and facet that it can touch and changes the color with its rays, but those colors get shifted with the ever-present wind, bending a new facet into view and sweeping the old one away just when I think I understand it. Even the mist and haze shift with the winds and the sun and change the distant colors of mountains. The only stable element is the earth itself, the cut-out shapes of the mountains and the blank distance of the sage basin.

Even the sounds here in the barn are un-oriented, if happily familiar. The tin roof keeps up a continual jangle and chatter, and the wind blows through the holes in the roof, not whistling but whooing. Sometimes it sounds like a car driving up the tarmac; sometimes it sounds like a jeep coming down the gravel road. And sometimes the drone and ring and rattle of the roof disguises the real vehicles so I am startled when a visitor appears at the Barn doors, even though the parking space for vehicles is directly in front of them.

I am not unoriented in my space — the four walls of the barn, with its high roof and rafter structures and open doors surround me; I know intimately how far it is from the furthest canvas to the barn door where I check the shape of a mountain in the distance. The sense of time — pick-up at 4 PM, leave Beatty for Portland by December 12th — these elements also orient me, giving me a sense of goal and urgency that an unoriented reality wouldn’t have.

I began the process knowing what I was facing. I came with lots of good materials with which to do the work. I came with Jer, who structures our Beatty life. I have had help from good friends here in town, and Suzanne and Charles lent out their eyes, helping me with the insights I need to finish the work adequately. I read about the desert in W.L. Fox’s books and about “Space and Place” in Yi-Fu Tuan. I had words of wisdom from Jef Gunn and fellow critique members. I painted the Oregon high desert to practice and the Oregon Coast to practice some more. It has been a journey, which tried to suss out how not to paint a goal. I’m almost there. Another day — or two. It’s a conundrum as well as an adventure.

Here’s a view south from the Red Barn on November 14, 2009; I would guess this was taken about 10:30 AM, which I know because that’s the way things south sometimes look at  10:30 AM.

And below is a Maynard Dixon painting:

Maynard Dixon, Edge of the Amargosa Desert, 1927

There’s always company on this path, deserted, unoriented as it may seem.

Reporting from The Goldwell House in Beatty Nevada, four miles and 3 hours (today) from the Red Barn.

Day 30: “Finished” Done, Complete, Replete, the End, 2009

I have declared the big linen panorama “finished.” Note the quotes. I almost never finish a work until it has sat and thought for a while. And until I have sat and looked for a while. However, we will hold an Open Studio next Saturday, pack up the Studio Sunday, pack up the house after that, and wend our leisurely way back to Portland, Oregon, avoiding winter storms as much as possible. The panels should be dry enough to roll and transport by next Sunday. I don’t dare add another stitch of paint until we are back home.

So here are the seven panels. Tomorrow Jer and I are going down the Beatty Cut-off to Death Valley, where I’m going to paint landscape in proper perspective with proper coloring and properly conventional notions. When we come back, weather and desire permitting, it’s little hamlet-scapes around Beatty; I still have the Community Center to deal with, and I would rather like to paint that Joshua Tree with its big rock and 5 huge satellite dishes.

David Lancaster may be able to come up from Vegas this week with proper lights and get some good photos, but these will have to do for the nonce. Sometime later this week, I will try to add photos which combine the pieces, so you can get a sense of the panoramic scope. And I might even make comments. But tonight, it’s just each panel, one at a time, photography by JOU. And no journaling until I get combos photographed, which will be sometime before Sunday. No promises beyond that.

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 1 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 2 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 3 (east) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 4 (center) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 5 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 6 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa, Panel 7 (west)) 4′ x 5′, Oil on linen, 2009

Of course, the titles with their directions are “oriented”, making a veritable lie of the rest of the title.

And I should, for the sake of the record, add that some of these panels (the ones in the center)  went through 3 versions today, and many before that. I had one version done when Jer showed up. He took a walk and I saw other things to do to those panels, and when he came back, he had further suggestions that were quite good and so had to be dealt with.  I had previously revised the panels after hearing Suzanne and Charles’ suggestions (all of which I took, albeit perhaps not quite as they imagined). David Lancaster may be able to come up from Vegas this week with proper lights and get some good photos, but these will have to do for the nonce.

So look and look again, at the desert, at the canvas, at your mind, at your paints. And then look again.

When we left, after sunset tonight, the Desert Flower sculpture which lies in the Barn’s yard was shining in the waning light while the almost full moon was glistening above. It was glorious and heart-breaking.

Reporting on the last day of November on the last day of the big project painting from the Goldwell House, run by the Goldwell Open Air Art Foundation, in Beatty, Nevada, home to Beatty Mountain and the Beatty Merc. And an almost full moon tonight.

Day 33: Bits and Bytes,  December 3, 2009

Yesterday, I took the day off and was playing at painting the Beatty Community Center when the silver Honda pulled up with David Lancaster and all his photo equipment. So I got to exploit the photographer. Actually he had set up and done some photography before he found me, but at the Barn, after some mugs with the big pano, I decided to take off the tape from the panels.

You can see the beginning of the process — that’s me on the step stool.

And here are the panels, without the tape. Oh wondrous-much!

Un-oriented Amargosa, 5′ x 28′, Oil on linen, 2009

After more mugs of me with the panos (ho-hum — the panels are better by themselves), I further exploited the photographer by making him take mug shots of me and the desert. I understand that the competition is scarcely fair — one can’t compete with the desert. But David did his best and we had a jolly time of not being formal about the process, nor the product.

Ultimately David got serious and photographed the real subject with the incidental one standing in front:

I’m astonished at what he could capture in the bright desert sun. There’s my scene, although I’m not looking in the right direction. I kept telling him my best side was the other one, but he ignored me.

Thank you, David Lancaster, superb photographer, raconteur, and friend.

Reporting from Beatty, Nevada, at the Goldwell House, part of the Goldwell Open Air Museum.