I spent most of the day finishing the panel cutting, taping, and tacking up. The process looks rather elegant in this photo, although I could have cropped out a bunch of concrete. But then what would the tarantula have had to wander about on?
Here’s panels 5, 6, and 7, lined up, waiting for decisions to be made.
The easel looks skeptical to me. And I keep thinking of setting up still lifes as I photograph these. The five panel set looked best, but that had to do with the lighting and the camera range. I had to keep backing up as the group got longer.
So right now the entire set is 5 feet high by 28 feet long.
John Donahoe and his dog came in just as I sat down to ponder, so I pondered how he should paint his screen door instead. He bought one of my paintings during the last residency and so feels he has a certain in with the artistic eye. Mostly I pointed out that the bars he was going to use to strengthen the doors might need incorporated into any design he fashioned. And I declined to do the painting myself.
By the time he left, I felt refreshed. The panels were up and now it was time to try out various schemes on news print to see whether/what/if/how I could put the landscape on the panels, given the 4:5 ratio of each panel as well as the 28 feet of space. This morning, I thought I needed 15 panels and six months rather than seven panels and six weeks. But after John gave my brain a rest, and I started sketching, I decided that I could use the panels as they are.
I sketched out some ideas, trying out cutting the panels in half horizontally to make that horizontal desert space that most people see, but as I worked, I discovered a vanishing point — or at least a horizon that I could make use of. Halving the canvases would have made easier painting (less to cover, for one thing) but a much more conventional scene. Less challenging, hence less fun. They don’t call me an over-achiever for nothing.
So having made The Decision to use the panels vertically, as they are now taped and tacked, and having used up a pad of newsprint, I thought I should set out some masonite boards. These are not quite the right ratio, but close (3:4 rather than 4:5) and perhaps tomorrow begin by doing plein air studies for each panel. So I put out my boards, feeling like the day went well.
It’s a bit of a line-up –where all the perps look a bit caustic.
And finally, Jer came, and I had to shoo the tarantula — yesterday’s visitor perhaps, which really found the Barn in its migratory way — out the door. Stretcher bars, smelling of moist Portland air, perhaps hurried it on.
Today’s day didn’t seem as long and hard as yesterday — but then I did more thinking and less unpacking and tacking up.
I also decided what the second panel of the seven will depict. It’s the far end of the valley, which isn’t directly south of the Barn, but rather southeast. So it will follow the close-in Bare Mountains on panel 1 and then, in panels 3 –7, the scene will take a long walk north west, up the Funeral and Grapevine ranges:
East (right) side of panel 2
Left side of panel 2.
Remember, the camera flattens long landscape scenes like this, so I can see these two side-by-side scenes becoming vertical, shades of gray-green, muted yellows, and rusty-undercoat reds. I don’t intend for any of the foreground to be present. So the Amargosa Desert will (she says hopefully) float way way up the canvas, finally meeting the delicious blues of the Specter Range, with Mts.Schader and Montgomery, past the Devil’s Hole and then curve back north of Ash Meadows, for the following 5 panels to present the Funeral and Grapevine Mountains.
Reported, more hopeful tonight than last night, from Beatty, Nevada.
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