Celebration!
Oil on canvas, 10x10
Deming, NM
I am so glad to be in the West that I stop outside of Deming, NM, to paint. The sun is warm on my face - even hot! - and I see mountains and red earth and a sky as big as forever. I paint the mountains and the grasses and that eternal sky with abandon and with joy. I'd do another, but I need to press on.
I arrive at Dad and Paula's house in Tubac just after dark on Wednesday. It has been a day of awe-inspiring landscapes. I see mountains and plains, beautiful rock formations, the start of red earth and the buttery yellow grasslands that spark my heart and imagination every time.
As I drive this last stretch, I think about driving, and how much I love it, and the space and time it gives me to look at the land, and understand it, and contemplate how I'd paint it.
Peter always tells me that I come back from these trips and paint better than ever. In part it is because of all the painting I do on these trips, but in part, it is because of all the driving and all the looking.
The road spools out beneath my tires, and my eyes find the light and the dark, the shadows and the colors, the recesses and the highlights of everything around me. It is pure pleasure. It is my school, my church, my new ideas and my hopes, all together.
Here is my painting in the landscape:
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Scenes from the Road
A house in New Mexico
Painted on the roadside in Deming, NM
The New Mexico highway stretches out toward ridge after ridge of blue mountains
Me, a little blurry from all the traveling, at Dad and Paula's.
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Dog of the Day
It's Heather MacLeod's Ginger, up in Maine, wondering where her favorite car went.
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