Great Sand Dunes Journal, First Installment

I'm finally getting around to posting the first part of my artist in residence journal. More is coming soon, just as soon as I can finish typing it out and adding some photos. See the first two days here...

GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK
Sunday, Sept. 20
By the time we make our way through the mountains and into the enormous San Luis Valley there is no light left in the sky or on the road. Our headlights cut through the night to reveal only 50 feet of dead-straight asphalt, a few deer in the scrub by the side of the road, and the occasional kangaroo rat hopping to safety just in front of our tires. CONTINUE READING...

Winter mountain

I'm sick. Again. Seems like it's been every few weeks lately, but as long as it's not the swinely variety I will survive. It's frustrating though to have all day at home and not have the energy to get into the studio. I'm going to post a link to my Great Dunes page on my website soon, but for now, another found painting.

The wave

I was cleaning my studio this week and came across a few paintings on paper that I had forgotten that I did, so I'll post this one while I'm finishing up some other work.

Discovering Cindy Tower

In my random time-wasting/procrastinating/web browsing I stumbled upon this great site that has video of interviews and studio visits with artists that are really well done and not nearly as pretentious as some I've watched where either the videographer can't get out of his own way, or the artist is deified to a laughable degree.

The video above is about a fascinating artist - Cindy Tower - I'd never heard of, but plan to find out more about. I want to go paint with her! Enjoy...

The more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

On painting...

"The only thing to do is to do what you are going to do the way you would have liked to have done it."
—— Arthur Dove 1931

Sketches and seasons

Here's a few more sketches from Great Sand Dunes National Park that I just got around to scanning in. These are postcard sized and were done out in the dunes. If you look close at the larger versions you might still be able to see some grains of sand stuck to the paint.

Since I came back from Colorado it seems the seasons are changing like flip cards. The light is now dim on my morning commute and dark on my way home—I'm remembering how that can interfere with painting progress sometimes. For example, I need to get down to the beach to get some shoreline reference photos for a small painting I'm doing. That should be easy, since I live only a block and a half from the beach, but since I'm in the city during all available daylight hours, it will have to wait until the weekend. It's also hard to think of firing up the studio when I pull into the driveway and see it standing there cold and dark, but I'll just have to adjust..and get back to work!

Dunes for Denali

Well, my Denali application is, not "in-the-mail", but in the internet ether I guess. Now I just have to wait an endless amount of time to hear if I got this latest artist residency. I never really understand why it takes so long, sometimes months, to process the applications. Can't they just have a meeting, like, the week after the deadline and pick someone? Then just email, or mail, their decision the next week? That's only two weeks, but I must be missing something about the process, so I'll be patient...

These are three of the six paintings I needed for my application (click on them to view larger), all from my Great Sand Dunes National Park residency. Two of them are of Medano Creek, a very shallow stream of water which runs from the mountains and along the base of the dunes. In late September, when I was there, it had retreated to the east and was rather lazily pushing forward only
to be absorbed into the dry sand of the wide creek bed, which gives a clue to how large Medano gets in spring and early summer. I wish I'd had the chance to take an entire day to hike up it further, but time ran out on me.