What a pleasure it is to return to a place where people know you and your habits and your needs.
Suzie and Riley McCoy, caretakers at the Museum a half mile up the road, dropped by to check on me and to see if I had the other end of their walkie-talkie. Until we find it (that could take a while) they’ve promised to physically check to see if I’ve fallen over any buckets of desert glass or gotten bit by a Green Mojave. I don’t think I need such care, but it feels good that they will look in once in a while.
And John Donahoe, after picking my brains about how to paint a scene on his screen door, loaned me a step stool to reach the top of the big canvases.
John bought Zabriskie Point from me during the last residency, and he and his dog have become regular visitors at the Red Barn. The stool is particularly wonderful because I can step on the first step and hang onto the top while I paint the top of the canvas — just the right height. He also gave me a great Hubble photo print and other fun photos he’s taken over the years. Treasures.
And then Richard Stephens dropped by. He’s the guy who told me about the Green Mojave rattlesnake the other day; he’s an artist (painter, photographer, flute maker) who no longer works in oils. So he brought me a box full of no-longer needed oil paints, which will definitely be used on the big canvases. But I was equally (or more) impressed with his flutes. He brought two and played them in the barn, where they sounded glorious.
These are based on native American (and many other cultures’) pentatonic scales, so they have that lovely eerie sound that signifies space and the universe to me. After playing inside, I made Richard go outside and play, so I could hear the sound across the desert. The photograph I took pretty much obliterates Richard’s face, but the desert scene so captivated me that I ignored the problem of shadow:
In spite of all this socializing, or maybe because of it, I also got some painting done.
I did draft 2 of the board study for the canvas panel 2:
It will get further revision, but it is giving me ideas about the canvas work that are useful. Then I started Board Panel #7,the last panel, not because I thought that was what I would work up on the canvas next, but because the light was right. The last panel is in the west, and it was morning, so it lit up some foothills of the Grapevine Range in glorious burnt siennas:
The foreground here looks much better than in panel 2; there I’m working with longer distances so I have to do more smudging and smooghing. Here, of course, the sky needs work, but the paint has to dry a bit before I can work it properly.
Then, I thought about the big canvases and looked at the small-scale long one on the back wall for guidance. After using newspring to copy out where the largest forms were located on each small-scale panel , I tore down this canvas rendition and tossed it into the trash. It had served its purpose and was too muddy to be worth trying to save.
So on to yesterday’s canvas Panel #2: I instantly realized that because of the length of the panels, I needed a rolling palette gadget. I made one up from various pieces of things I found around the studio.
The wheels allow me to move the palette along the 28 plus feet of canvas; when I tried moving one of the folding tables along the panels, it collapsed, sending all my stuff sprawling to the floor. That was when I started looking for wheels. This is strange but works just fine.
So I further worked Panel #2, and then, the light having gone to the west, decided that Panel #1, in the east, would be what I would tackle next.
I have never painted on linen before, and certainly not on clear gessoed linen. The color of the background helps and hinders, depending…. And the weave of the canvas is startlingly obvious, even when I’ve laid on a lot of paint. I’m learning as I go and thinking that, by the time I finish, I might have some idea of what I should have known about clear gessoed linen — before I started. Nevertheless, I am on my way. Panel #2 is on its second day and Panel #1 (on the left) is on its first day.
I’m playing with the color temperature of the sky, as you can see (The photo is a bit dark but then so is the linen underneath). The sky in these panels is mostly AM, cool ultramarine, while the basin/desert is warm. The mountains, at the left, which were made bolder, larger, and brighter after this photo was taken, will be warm blues, burnt umbers, reds, and golds with shadows of ultramarine deep, payne’s gray and maybe some cold purples.
Jer drove up just as I was frantically trying to catch the western sun on these mountains, (the Bare range),They were all shades of gold. He took photos while I continued to lay on paint. So even if I can’t see them that way again, I’m hoping his photos will carry me through the process.
Here’s the photo I took of Panel #2 this morning; it has a bit of scale to it, with the folding table at the righthand corner.
It takes a lot of paint to fill all that space. And a lot of arm work. Maybe I’ll lose weight and/or shape up. I am going to need more Liquin medium, though. But I may have enough paint, what with Richard’s contribution, to do the job.
Reporting from The Goldwell House, in Beatty, Nevada, where the desert night has fallen and it’s definitely chilly.
juneunderwood.com 