Diary of a Residency, Day 18, March 5, 2009

I charged off early to the Red Barn this AM — got there by about 8 or 8:30 and stayed until 5. It was warm enough to open the big doors and let the sun warm the inside, although about 3 the sun went too far west to come through the doors and it was suddenly cold enough for me to hunt around for my fingerless gloves.

I added 3 rocks to the growing circle/maze — two for the two days I didn’t go out there and one for today. It’s getting big enough to be clearly something now.

And then I started in on fixing/tweaking/massacring already well-along paintings. I took my laptop with me, and it proved to be the key to making changes with relative ease. My sieve-like brain won’t retain images, so reference photos are essential. I download them all to the computer — and having the computer on hand to look at when I needed help made the tweaking much easier. Before, I had been printing out the absolutely essential reference photos and writing notes from the others, hoping to remember when I got to the easel. Now the laptop sits beside the easel and gives me those lost bits.

For example, I continue to work on “Shorty’s Rebellion” — the panorama of  Rhyolite and the Open Air Museum from the Red Barn. I needed, for composition purposes, to “enclose” the middle-ground elements within the mountains (even though that involves a bit of artistic license). I went out and looked at the mountain, but couldn’t keep it in my head, even for the minutes it took to go back in and pick up a brush. So I took this photo:

Bonanza Mountain from the Red Barn (Photo).

Then I used it (on the left below) in the painted panorama (which is still at least 3 drafts away from being completed):

I even took a photo of the Compass Rose that Maria Arango formed at the Red Barn, so I can later use the info to edit the crude painting above:

I need to ask Maria how she got the tiny bits of foliage to grow around the white stones — whether that happened naturally or if she watered them.

Along with the Panorama, I took care of some fingerprints on some paintings that I tacked to the walls and I did a draft of the writing on the Sourdough Saloon. And I worked hard on the Bottle House, which now has its mesquite tree:

The Bottle House at Rhyolite, for Betty, 12 x 16″, Oil on masonite, 2009

Tomorrow I need to take flyers around about the Open House (on Saturday this time) and work more on Shorty’s Rebellion.

I ordered ten more 12 x 16 boards from Dick Blick — they’ll get here Tuesday or Wednesday. I was down to two, and decided that rather than fool around with the canvas and clips, I would just go with more boards. I also need to be working up the largish square (3 x 3?) that’s still taped to the Studio wall. I’m beginning to see a direction that might work. Ah, the plans, the foolish plans, of mere mortals.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, on this 5th day of March in the year of our Lord, 2009.

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