Petrified Forest Residency, Day Whatever, Oct. 14, 2010

I have lost track of time. A bit of disorientation in space as well, but  mostly of time.

After returning from the Lightning Field, I had to sleep a lot, and I had to re-orient my head to painting. We found a hardworking crew, putting up a fence around our back “patio” space. They start work at 7 AM.  So at 8 this morning, I was at the far south end of the Park, working one last small painting of the employee compound (Park Service Rustic sort of buildings) on a hill which overlooks the entire Visitor’s Center, the road into and away from it, the compound, and the desert and bluff behind.

The south Visitor’s Center is secondary to the big Neutra-designed northern one (which is off I-40). The south center is call the Rainbow Forest and, along with its indoor triassic museum exhibits, features (outside) a lot of petrified logs, big, small, and always colorful. The paths go up one of the eroding cones of badlands, and wind around among them in order to show the logs working their way out of the earth itself. It’s fairly wonderful, but not exactly what I painted.

Rainbow Forest Employees’ Compound, 12 x 12″, oil on masonite, 2010

As I said, I am interested as much in the human artifacts as the natural ones, and I needed, for the set of paintings that make up the rectangle I’m envisioning, a small square human artifact painting. I have to think about this compound painting for a while — it’s neither here nor there, it seems to me. And it needs, as usual, tweaking. Perhaps it will fit in with the others when I get them all together.

Then, because I wanted to add another long board to my collection, I did a horizontal which is primarily a color study but which also includes some human artifacts. It’s pretty abstract (which I like) but needs more work. As I was painting it, with the swirls and liquid-like movements, I realized that this landscape was shaped by water. So the quality of water moving about, in the sand, ignoring the human definitions and shoving them aside, seemed appropriate.

From the Rainbow Forest Overlook, 12 x 24″ Oil on masonite, 2010

As of today, I have painted 20 paintings, not counting the 3 that got discarded. I think I want to do one more, of the Neutra Plaza from a different point of view, just to round out my 3 week (21 day) stay.

I have not yet decided which painting the Park will retain — I can take these all home and send one back after I’ve worked on it a bit, although I might have to negotiate the process a bit. But I think every painting I did needs a bit more work, so I’m inclined to play with them through the winter.

I am burned out on painting for the nonce. It was like pulling teeth to get to work this morning, and tomorrow we think we’ll go to Holbrook and visit the Courthouse Museum and Jim Gray’s Rock Shop. And get a Dairy Queen, as a reward.  And perhaps I will have to start the last painting, of the Neutra Plaza. I think I’m on a crusade to make the Neutra design loveable.

Reporting from the Petrified Forest, Apt 14 –June