Petrified Forest Residency, Day 12, Oct 7, 2010

I painted, (on masonite, not on stuccoed walls) the Painted Desert Inn this morning, and I demoed painting at the Painted Desert Inn this afternoon. Turns out demoing is a bit easier than painting, although in both cases the wind played havoc with the work at hand.

No boards danced off into the badlands, but this morning, my heavy bottle of medium was no match for the wind — the bottle was pushed nose down into the palette at least four times, smearing me, my clean-up rags, and my normally good temper — I can attest that the wind pays no attention to words from the artist.

Painting the adobe building proved to be an eye opener, particularly as I’ve been reading about Richard Neutra’s ideas for the main compound and visitor’s center. Although Neutra was into the hard-edged, steel and undecorated design of Modernism, he also was fascinated by the non-box like structures of Japanese architecture, asymmetry that balances.

Well, the Painted Desert Inn, designed by Lyle Bennett in the Spanish Pueblo Revival style and constructed over an older, petrified wood hotel and café by CCC guys in the 1930’s, is a marvel of asymmetrical but balanced lines. It maintains a horizontal feel, but its flat roofs have levels upon levels of edges, all in soft shades of pink and iron oxide, shades that the eye can discern but the painter is doomed to merely attempt to recreate. The inn’s  rounded edges (which are definitely not Neutrian) capture the sunlight so the eye understands the different levels. The hand-troweling of the cement stucco also makes for subtle shadings within the “flats” of the walls, so the whole undulates softly as the sun plays across it.

The Painted Desert Inn looks and feels solid, unlike my painting board, which chattered wildly at times, trying to fly away. Once I found that the wind was so strong it was blowing my brush sideways, so that a line I was attempting to draw kept moving sideways with the wind.

I couldn’t finish this painting, but in keeping with the good/bad/ugly spirit of this journal, I present Draft 1. The forefront, in front of the wall, will have the typical desert foliage, sage and rabbitbrush and a couple of junipers. The colors need more work, with the distinct levels made more distinct. But the basic lines are there. This is one of those drafts which require me to go back to the site and paint — I could not do it in the studio, without being on site.

The Painted Desert Inn (Draft 1), 12″ x 12″, oil on masonite, 2010

Then I took a short lunch break and went back to the PDI (as everyone around here calls it), going inside where I thought the wind would be lessened. Alas, between the two open sides of the upper porch, where I was painting and the various interior doors that open to the outside, the wind played more havoc with my work.  I didn’t realize how strong it was at first, as I was sitting down at my easel. But when I stood up and could see more than sky out the open porch windows, there were dust clouds erasing all the views on the basin floor. Pilot Rock sort of stood above the dust roiling about, but the rest of the cones and mounds were quite lost.

However, I had started a painting yesterday, so I could continue with it, mostly working on the cement stucco of the left side, a stucco window that framed the scene.

From the Porch at the Painted Desert Inn (Draft 1), 12 x 16″, oil on masonite, 2010

You may note that this too is a draft — I want to make the space more strongly emphasized. But the wind and dust was making my eyes water, so I put this painting against the wall with others that I had brought along to exhibit and sat down, where I was a bit more protected from the wind. I picked up one of the earlier paintings I had done that needed tweaked. All this time, I was hearing slams and bangs from inside the building, with far fewer visitors coming through to spend time chatting. But I paid no attention until, blam, the painting above got caught in a wild draft from the interior and fell over on its nose. The porch has a dusty (duh) cement floor, a good bit of which (the dust, I mean) ending up on the front of the wet oil.

I cleaned it off as best I could, laid it flat, went back to my easel,  and Blam, another painting beside it got knocked over by another gust from some unseen but opened door inside. It blew a bunch more dust onto the wet oils of the painting I had just cleaned. I decided to lay all the paintings leaning against that inside wall flat on the floor, face up. That way, I assumed they wouldn’t suffer more damage. Then I once again cleaned the dust off the painting.

I also laid the painting I had worked on this morning flat on the floor and then went back to tweaking the one on the easel. About that time a visitor came along and mentioned that while she liked the painting, it was getting awfully dusty and maybe I should clean it off. She was looking at the one I had cleaned up twice. I tried to ignore the comment, but she persisted. When I resigned myself to  looking at the painting, it was once more covered with dust, this time dust that evidently came out of the air. Likewise, the PDI painting had grains embedded in its wet surface. And even the painting on the easel, while less effected, had dust grains on it. The others were less effected because the oil was dry.

One visitor remarked that I should just call them sand paintings and give up. Well, one of the two ideas seemed right.

It was 3:30, time to clean up each wet painting, insert them into the carrier out of the wind, and get out of Dodge. It took me until Jer got there to get them cleaned up and put away.

Tomorrow, I’m painting and demoing on the lower patio/porch, which seemed, at least late this afternoon, to be better protected from the wind. Tomorrow morning, I hope to do a 12 x 24″ vertical from that patio, rather than attempting to drag my gear down and  paint the vertical from the Wilderness trail. Weather permitting, Jer is going to hike down;  I’m going to stay up top. We hope to get there early, before the wind picks up.

Here’s a photo of the Wilderness Trail spot (center right, on the path) from which I thought I might try painting — before the wind persuaded me otherwise.

Oh and a bit of good news: the Park has consented to allow us to have an extra week in the lodgings. We both felt we needed some more time here, and now we have it. I can stop hyperventilating about getting the last few paintings finished for the putative presentation. We will be going off for a few days for a visit to the Lightning Field (Walter de Maria’s land art piece in New Mexico). But then we’ll return for another five days of painting and photographing and drinking in the landscape. And maybe I’ll just plaster a canvas with some medium and let the dust do the rest of the painting; that should please some critic or other.

Reported from Apt K, Petrified National Forest Park, October 7, 2010 –June