First Fort Defiance Painting - and a Tubac Piece, Too

Three Brothers

Oil on canvas, 10x10

I leave Tubac in a wailing windstorm, making promises that I will turn around if the wind is too strong or too scary, with me in the tall van. Out on the highway, I am blown around a little, but it's not too bad. Nothing I can't handle. So I push on, driving slowly and carefully.

I don't make it to Fort Defiance, or Gallup, where I've decided to stay, but I do make it to Holbrook, Arizona, that first night, and to Fort Defiance early the next day. I drive around a little, and then set up to paint. This painting shows just part of a huge, muscular rock formation that lines one of the roads bordering my first hometown.

Here's my painting in the landscape. 

As I paint, three young Navajo men stop to see what I'm doing, and to talk.  Darren Dejolie, on the left, is a pretty amazing photographer. His brother, Chad, in the middle, is a Red Sox fan! Franklin Tsinnijinnie is an artist who's interested in starting with oils. He showed me some lovely drawings he'd done. I will see if I can get one to show you.

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I drove through Fort Defiance a few years ago, and as far as I remember, it is unchanged since then. It is not much of a town. There is a large, new hospital that seems to employ hundreds of people, judging from the cars in the parking lot. There are at least two schools, and a gas station. A lot of abandoned buildings. The hospital where my dad worked is just a shell, and according to Dad, the house we lived in is long gone. But it was a log home, looking, I am sure, like this one. 

There is a mission, with several buildings. I counted four churches. Lots of folks in town live in trailers. Others live in houses that look like they were built by the government. Many of the homes and trailers look perfectly fine, humble and livable. Others are just awful, falling down and with yards strewn with litter and broken-down vehicles. 

And there are homeless, hungry dogs everywhere. Dad tells me that this is a longstanding issue. When we lived there, men would go out once a year and shoot all the stray dogs. I understand why they did this, but it makes me deeply sad. The dogs I see every day here break my heart, and if there is anything that brings this phase of my painting trip to an early close, it will be that I can't stand to see these homeless, hungry dogs any more. I have bought a bag of dog food, and am feeding the ones I can. And I have an idea about how to help - I will let you all know more when I have done more research. 

Meantime, I will say that most of the dogs I see do not look like they are in bad shape. Many, but not all, are thin. Most have shiny coats, and seem to be in no pain.

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Scenes from the road

Really? Who would want to live on this street, in Holbrook, Arizona? 

I am sure I took photos of these creatures on an earlier trip, but I just couldn't resist. They're in Holbrook, AZ, outside of stores that sell petrified wood and fossils. I saw a dozen dinos on the road between Holbrook and Gallup.

Horses in the town of Navajo, Arizona, on I-40. The town consisted of a gas station /convenience store, five houses and this spread with two horses. Wow. 

Here is a hogan, the traditional Navajo home. They are often eight-sided, though they can be of any shape, and any size. Traditionally, they are made of mud and wood. The door faces the east, so that the Dine people (Navajo word for Navajo people, with an accent on the "e") could welcome the dawn. While the hogan is no longer the primary home for most Navajos, many of them have hogans in their yards. One article I read said that the revival of the hogan in the Navajo Nation accounts for a resurgence in carpentry, construction and other related fields. You can read more about hogans by clicking here. 

This wild horse was standing in the field by the driveway I pulled into to make

 the painting at the top of the blog. He stared at me for a bit, then walked off. 

Another of the amazing rock formations near Fort Defiance. 

There's a streak of yellow rocks on the road from Gallup, NM, to Fort Defiance. I'm planning on painting them. North of Fort Defiance, I found a place where the hills are green! I'm hoping to paint these, as well. 

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Extra! 

Barrio, Tubac

Oil on canvas, 16x16

I am painting faster than I am writing blogs, and of course, this is something that happens. If I paint for 8 hours a day, and spend a couple hours getting there and back, it doesn't leave much time for me to write blog posts! So I am a big backed up on paintings - but no worry, you'll see them all! 

My friends Cynthia and Kevin are staying in the Barrio in Tubac, a very pretty development of brightly colored adobe houses. The setting sun lights them up beautifully! I painted this just before I left Tubac for Fort Defiance.  

My unfinished painting in the landscape. 

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Dog of the Day

Yes, the Dog of the Day today is a duck. Dad and Paula tell me that this duck had a mate, another white duck, and one day, she vanished. They don't know if she flew away, died, got run over - they don't know what happened. But one day, this duck was alone. Dad and Paula think that maybe he can't fly. 

One day, another white duck came along, and Dad says they were happy, thinking he had another mate. But that duck left, too. They saw this one trying to make nice with an egret, but that didn't work out, either. So the duck of the day is a lonely duck, though the other ducks (mallards, so not white ducks like him), do seem to have taken him in as one of the flock.