RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH

RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH.  **SOLD**
Acrylic on wood block -- on rabbit brush stems.
Total size 7" x 7"

While the actual painting in this piece, RAVENS ON RABBIT BRUSH, is only 1.5” x 1.5” x .5 the “twig” base is actually rabbit brush stems in winter. These soft green stems are woody in winter and will die and turn gray in future seasons.  The reference photo of the two ravens was taken by a new friend, Victor Jacinto Cano, an artist and musician from Bellingham. We have about nine mutual friends on Facebook but had never met, so he stopped recently to visit me while on a road trip around the southwest. He’s traveling with Lola, his adorable little Havanese doggie companion.

I have decided to include this piece in my #70Paintings70Years project.

A few of the #70Paintings70Years pieces I posted previously are in my first art show, with friend Reiser, at the Anasazi State Park in Boulder, Utah. I wasn’t actually ready for a show, but could not pass up this fine opportunity.  It runs until April 11, 2015, so if you are passing through the area check out this fine state park. Before or after you watch the video about the Coombs Archeological Site, look at G. K. Reiser’s colorful paintings and whimsical sculptures (occupying most of the wall space) and my paintings (at the back of the room).

At my first art show (paintings look better in person)
Anasazi State Park gallery
Boulder, UT

Victor Jacinto Cano and Lola

One of Victor's mask carvings

Lola and Sudsie running free 

THE COLORADO RIVER, acrylic on paper
by G. K. Reiser

BULLWINKLE
by G. K. Reiser (stone, wire, wood)
about 18" high

CONVERGENCE

To go with the latest painting done for my project #70Paintings70Years -- One Woman Paints Her Life, I found an autobiographical piece I wrote while messing with words in a group of wonderful writer friends in Bellingham. I added a few words and here it is.

“Please, God,” she said as a child. “Don’t let me grow up to lead a boring life.”

In winter she looked out the window at the snow and wrote a poem that started with “the wood violets sweet. . .” and went on to win a contest so at the age of eight she became a “published writer,” no matter it was only in the Priest River Times. Encouraged, she wrote more often and climbed higher trees to look out beyond the valley of the creek where she lived, over the fences and cows to the river that led to the ocean where she would go someday. After she climbed down out of the trees to graduate from high school, she left the valley to search for big vistas that led elsewhere, always elsewhere.

When she finally found the ocean she’d always longed for, the water was so very cold, and she got lost. She longed for trees and land and for creeks you could jump across. How could she get it right? How could she discover where she belonged? Then she met a new friend and moved to a small desert town, where she found a convergence of air and scenery and endless big vistas to explore. Life is definitely not boring in the desert, and this is home, for now.

The making of CONVERVENCE 

Ready to paint - but first decide a color scheme.

One would expect the sky to be blue and the ground in the
desert to be orangish. But since I have neither a "brand"
nor a reputation as an artist, I am totally free to experiment.

CONVERGENCE, 9" x 12", Acrylic on Wood Panel

RICKY BOY

Occasionally I take care of my friend Louise’s llamas. Louise has installed a curious fence – not really like the one behind Ricky -- but one made out of sticks from a couple of beaver dams that had been disassembled by people who aren’t so smart about the value of beavers and beaver dams to the watershed, here in the desert. But I won’t get on a soapbox now. Louise had permission to gather the sticks, because it so happens that sticks from beaver dams are all fairly close in diameter and length. 

Back to the llamas. They are friendly and enjoy smelling one’s face. When their muzzles actually touch my face I hold my breath and make smooching sounds. They don’t seem to mind. Ricky is the friendliest of the 4 llamas, and his mostly black coat makes him particularly photogenic.

RICKY BOY, 8" X 8"
Acrylic on Wood Panel

Ricky Boy and the fence constructed of sticks
from a disassembled beaver dam

Ricky Boy, Cristo, and Friz the Goat

I saw a travel show once in which Anthony Bourdain ate goat's bladder stuffed with spleen, roasted over an open fire. I have not told Fritz the Goad yet.