I didn’t know what the sound was, except that it was extremely strange. The Red Barn, with its tin roof and its kangaroo rat and its tarantula and occasional bird often harbors strange sounds. But this, well, this, this sounded like rain. Pitter patter rain, on a tin roof.
And so it was.
Earlier in the day, a Nye County law enforcement fellow drove up and turned around in the Barn’s gravel parking lot; our conversation was as it should have been. “Hi.” “Nice day” “Looks like rain” “Really?” “Look at the sky.” “Oh.” “Have a nice day.” He was just doing a drive-by check in and never got out of his car. But I’m blaming the rain on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed.
The early part of the day was warm and sunny enough to change out of my vest and turtle neck into a short sleeved shirt. I wandered around, found a rock for my growing Rock Road, and put it down, thinking as I did that David would like the pink rocks that are to be found everywhere here. They don’t translate in my camera very well, but I’m drawn to them too.
Having wasted all the time I dared to, I started the final masonite panel, small, of course, because I don’t have more than a couple of tablespoons of Liquin.
It’s rather fun at this point to line up the panels. And working inside rather than outside, as I was in Diamond, Oregon, makes the lining up easy.
The brown panel in the center is how the panels all started. I could have gessoed them with white or some other color, but decided that working with that color would emulate the linen color I was going to work with. This is how I began the day’s session — panel 5 was done yesterday. Panel 7 (on the right) was done very early on, perhaps a week or more ago. So this morning, panel 6 was to be inserted.
Except for panel 7, panels 4, 5, and 6 all have north facing mountains. They are the very dickens to discern in any detail. These are the mountains that change form when you walk from one side to the other of the studio doors; at first they seem mostly blue shapes, but if you keep looking, you see shapes inside the shapes, and it finally dawns on you that it isn’t a mountain range; it’s mountains, in front of and behind, other mountains. It can drive the obsessive a bit crazy. Luckily I’m not quite that obsessive. Or maybe I’m crazy enough already.
This is basically the view I see when I look west from the Barn doors. The crumpled clump of mountains at the far right in the photo are the furthest northwest I will go with either panorama. They are somewhat visible. particularly in the early part of the day. The rest are theselovely amorphous colors and shapes, out of which I am determined to find panels 5 and 6.
Of course, I didn’t take a photo of 5 and 6, but rather of 6 and 7, just to show one stage in the development of the painting. Panel 6, on the left, is the last panel to be painted, and it is at its ornery stage, where no more paint can be attached until it gets good and tacky. It also, alas, reveals the dilemma of the ratio mis-match, but no more will be said of that.
By the time I left, there were masonite 12 x 16 inch panels to accompany all seven of the 4 x 5′ linen panels. I know, I know, there are only 5 here. But linen panels 6 and 7 still await the arrival of that Liquin medium. I painted a bit more with mineral spirits, but they are of limited usefulness.
Then Jer showed up, the rain hit the roof, we looked at each other in wonder, and then we meandered down the road. I regaled him with tales of county sheriffs and he recounted Wikipedia stints. And the sky continued to sound and look like rain. I’ll admit — I never felt a drop, even while locking the three locks on the studio door and marching to the car with my empty water jugs in hand.
Reporting from Beatty, Nevada, where a minute ago, rain sounded again. But now it’s gone. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to investigate the Amargosa River, just half a block away, to see if there’s any water in it.
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