Sunday, June 2, 2013

Spring Paintings from Autumn Memories

The visual subjects that have inspired paintings below were preserved in photographs taken during autumn of 2012. Why they endure as compelling images for me and why I return to paint them is the expression of strong feelings, pooled in my memory and distilled in my mind, that arise in response to elements such as fall colors, red horses, gnarly tree trunks, late afternoon flared light and its contrasting shadows. 





A white trailer parked against a background of  cottonwood, willow, or red birch tree trunks is a happy subject for me, I think my 1964 Santa Fe spam can harbors a rather jaunty, light-hearted presence encamped among winter's shabby, labyrinthine clumps of leafless trunks and branches that crowd the banks of the watershed.


(above)A Year Spent at Leisure in the Shelter of the Crazy Trees
 I think this coming autumn I shall remove from the center of town back to the BLM campgrounds on high alluvial plains of the Eastern Sierra escarpment.