Diary of a Residency, Day 27, March 14, 2009

Spent the day in Death Valley. Jer hiked in Golden Canyon while I painted at the mouth of it — just off the parking lot up the trail a few feet.

First things first, though. I realized as we drove to Death Valley through the Beatty cut-off, that what I love about mountains is not their stable (or seemingly stable) forms, nor the rock-or-hay-fields that lay at their feet. It’s the in-between states, the fingers of hills, so full of life here and in John Day — the places in the landscape where it has plasticity; it looks fleshy, alive, like it’s just rolling out from some slug-bound earth and stretching, like a cat, over the valley, under the stern eye of the distant mountain. It’s that element that I want to capture when I paint this landscape. If I could do that, that would suffice:

This is the photo of Golden Canyon, where I painted today. It hasn’t exactly the plasticity that I see coming down from Sunlight Pass, but it comes close. And the lighted up backdrop between the classic dark sides (think Renaissance landscapes) was perfect.

While I was painting, a man approached me (I was in the middle of the tourist trail) and said his daughter liked to draw. I nodded and kept on painting, but in a minute he reappeared, said daughter, Mindy Hill, in tow.

We hit it off immediately:

She likes to draw, does some watercolor, but hasn’t done much in oils. She is shy about drawing in public, but as we talked, she pulled out her drawing pad and started working on the mountain. She’s a very competent draftsperson, but she was dissatisfied with her drawing. She also liked talking to me, so she drew me while I painted. Here’s a bad photo of the drawing she did. What I love are the rocks she indicates with single lines on the right. And the draping of the fabric in my clothes is awesome. The face isn’t mine, but I suspect she was shy about trying too hard to look at me, and of course, I was talking and moving around, so impossible to draw very well.

It was an altogether pleasant way to spend a couple of hours — the shade was great, no wind, just perfect for painting. And laughing with Mindy at the comments of the tourists as they passed was good fun too –poking gentle fun, I hope.

At the end, Mindy minded my painting gear while I carried the board (18 x 24) back to the car:

The photo gives a sense of scale that I deliberately avoided painting, leaving out sky and path, trying to be brave and face only the forms and color.

So here’s the result. The photo was taken on-site and as usual mucked with Photoshop Elements, which may or may not have improved it (the photo, not the painting, I mean)

Golden Canyon at Golden Canyon (first draft), 18 x 24″ Oil on masonite 2009

I think the painting is much more yellow and gold ochre than I see on my screen. I would love to go back to Golden Canyon and paint again and again, just to see what would happen. It’s about 45 miles away, so that isn’t going to happen. But maybe I’ll become artist in residence at Furnace Creek  in the Death Valley National Park — Golden Canyon is only 3 miles from there.

Anyway, after I finished the painting, we ate lunch and looked at the crafts at the Fair at Furnace Creek and then we went on north, up the valley to Scotty’s Castle, which is truly something to see, and which I photographed at length and was somewhat awed by and had no ideas of painting at all. We bought Sam a sweat shirt and me a pair of earrings and us some ice cream and came on home, totally wiped. Oh, and we met a resident coyote, the park greeter. But all that will appear on southeastmain, where the travel-log is less about painting than about the travel.

Reporting from the Goldwell House, where quiet reigns, no tourists kibitiz, and there are no mountains (not in the house, at any rate).

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