Category: Red Barn

  • Every Long Journey (and Big Canvas)

    begins with a first step: That white line on the set of canvases? It’s the “horizon” — of the basin, not of the ranges that bound it NW and SE, nor of the far distant ones that seem to bound the far southern end of the Amargosa. But sorting out the boundary of the basin…

  • Take Brush, Put to Canvas: Day 4, Nov. 4, 2009

    I went altogether too long without painting. Sketching doesn’t substitute. Thinking isn’t adequate. Looking at scenery only makes one’s fingers twitch. So today I painted. Not well, not finished, but I got that brush in hand: First I did an acrylic-painted sketch on some sketching paper I taped together (Note to self — there is…

  • The Wall: Day 2, November 2, 2009

    It seems only right to issue a disclaimer: this “journal” is public, but is mostly a record for myself, so I know where I started and where I got to (whether oriented or no). Don’t feel bad if it’s boring, and you have to quit reading. I’m talking to myself, a bit like those ladies…

  • Orientation: Day 1, Nov.1, 2009

    Yi-Fu Tuan, in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience says: It is not possible to look at a scene in general; our eyes keep searching for points of rest. p. 161 If time is conceived of as flow or movement, the place is pause. p 198 Distance is a meaningless spatial concept apart from…

  • October 31, 2009: The Journey Continues

    We’re back in Beatty, back at the Red Barn Studio, Back at the head of the Amargosa Valley/desert/plain/playa, back where the land dwarfs the mind and the lungs expand with with the expansive space. It’s all here, just waiting for me. Unoriented Space. Reporting from the Atomic Inn, Beatty Nevada, Halloween Eve and the weekend…

  • Diary of a Residency, Day 38, March 25, 2009

    We went back out to Death Valley, to Zabriski Point, today. Jer hiked down to Gower  Gulch and I painted one of the 18 x 24″ boards. The sun was hot, the wind was blowing, but the board stayed put and the painting was well along by the time he returned. The photo was taken…

  • Diary of a Residency, Day 33, March 20, 2009

    Ahhhhhhh. It was a grand day at the Red Barn. I was reluctant to start. I knew I didn’t know how to fix the big paintings and I had no little ones to procrastinate on. And there was at least one other painting sitting around which was turned to the wall immediately as I walked…

  • Diary of a Residency, Day 31, March 18, 2009

    It’s good to hear from the few people who are reading this Journal. When I’m writing it, I sometimes get stopped, trying to decide who is my audience. I never definitively decided, but you’ve decided it for me. So I’ll watch my language and try to be a lady. Hi guys, good to hear from…

  • Diary of a Residency, day 26, March 13, 2009

    Friday the 13th. A nice easy slow day. After the exhaustion of Death Valley yesterday, I decided today not to attempt to deal with the wind and sun and carting the materials and setting up in the midst of sand fleas and kibitzers: I stayed inside the Red Barn, with the big doors wide open…

  • Diary of a Residency, Day 24, March 11, 2009

    I painted the big board that I was thinking about yesterday, the one of the landscape that holds the ghost town of Rhyolite and the Goldwell Sculptures. The last one I did was bad, so it got turned face to the wall. This time I knew I had to paint on-site to get the mountains…