A House by Westcliff

I loved the simplicity of this scene and worked up a painting from a photo that I took in the fall. I love the Sangres from the east side; there are so many beautiful views and it's just a little different on the other side of these mountains.

Wind at the Sand Dunes

My brother and his girlfriend came to the Valley for a visit and decided they wanted to go to the dunes . As it has been raining almost everyday, I thought well, we'll see how bad they really want to go. The day scheduled for the dunes visit was Friday and not your typical dunes weather but they wanted to go anyway. I decided to not climb the Sand Dunes so I painted. I and the mosquitos took refuge from the wind in some trees and this is what I painted... I was lucky I finished this before the rains came.

Conejos

This morning, I cleaned out my refrigerator. "What does that have to do with painting?" you ask. Absolutely nothing... other that how now I can open my refrigerator door without things falling out and along in reducing the clutter in my fridge, I am reducing the clutter of things to get done in the back of my mind; chores that have to be done. Sometimes you have so many trivial little lists in the back of your brain begging for attention that it starts affecting artistic performance. Dentist appointments, doctor appointments , wash the dog, clean the toilets, well you get the idea. I wish I had answers to deal with this problem- but I really don't. I'm just happy I got one small thing out of the way- Now if I could just take care of all of the other 50 things screaming for attention I could be at my artistic peak.

Painting above- Coni Grant and I went to the Conejos on Hwy 17 outside of Antonito to Josie Perea's house to paint. Sadly, Josie couldn't paint with us. We sat our easels up along the Conejos River and painted this very subtle rock scene. I prepared with a dark purple underpainting- which might have added to the somber feeling.