Diary of a residency, Day 28, March 15, 2009

The Ides of March — and a Sunday, to boot. I found the Car Guys on NPR today and got to giggle at the Latin quiz and listen to Garrison’s joke show. I hadn’t found NPR until today so it was a nice change. The classical music is good but too much gets monotonous.

Two weeks of painting left, although only one week of large paintings because of drying/travel time. So today, I put up a very large canvas (seems like 5 x 6 feet) on the (literal) back wall. I want to do some Death Valley Rock Formations there, from photos of course. I’ll need to work up a design, and I should have lots more time, but with any luck I can at least get a thinly painted sketch done by next Monday. I also have a smaller (about 30 x 30) canvas taped to another wall, which I haven’t started yet — don’t even have an idea for. I am going off tomorrow morning to do a long board of the Barrick Mine tailings and pyramid tomorrow, plein air, and that may take two trys even to get it a bit organized. And then I have the Beatty Map, a personal view, to push along. This last is really only for my own eyes, but I’ve got the mountains pretty well done, and so feel compelled to continue. It’s masked off like a window, and I’m eager to get enough done that I can remove the tape and see what it looks like.

This is Beatty Map, draft 2. It’s coming along.

I have almost finished the Rhyolite and Sculpture Museum landscape. It has just a few tweaks left — a couple of railroad grades and two bumpish places that need soothing. I’m pleased both with how it has come out and how it looks with the rest of the 360 degree landscape pieces. I think perhaps I’ll do one more of the playa next week on a small board. I can take a number of wet small boards home in safety, so I’m saving them for the last week.

If there is a commonality sensed between these two paintings, it comes from the fact that both towns (the ghost and the living) seem to have leaned into their respective mountains and are sheltered and contained by them.

The Death Valley/Golden Canyon painting is still rough — not worth putting up in its draft form right now. The paint is almost too thick — I need to overpaint, but may have to scrape back a bit so as not to make crackles. Now that I think of it, scraping back might be good for the vision. I eliminated the sky and path, but I’m not satisfied with the forms. Scraping may bring them out. I can’t virtually scrape with Photoshop, or I’d try it tonight. But I may have to give the program a twirl at the painting, just out of curiosity.

So my week’s plans are set; Monday is tomorrow (my birthday is Tuesday).  I thought maybe I’d just ride out the rest of the stay, but instead it appears that I’m going to leap in the fray and work until I can’t stand it any more. Or at least the number of plans I have makes it seem like that’s what is coming.

From Beatty Nevada, I sign off.

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