Tuesday Morning Sun, 10x10
This painting, and the one I made with it, Morning Majesty, come easily to me, which is always a joy. It is a cold morning, frosty even, and I find a place to pull off the main road, a place I haven't seen before, though I look every day.
When I paint back east, people always honk at me, and often shout at me. This is worst in New England and New York, but it happens pretty much everywhere in the east.
Here, on the reservation, no one does this, and I am thankful. I will be painting, focusing hard on what I'm doing, and in the best of times, the real world sort of falls away, and it is me and the painting. Then some idiot comes along and feels he has to honk and yell at me. I have often jumped so hard that I've smeared the painting. And it always pulls me out of the painting, out of the zone.
Several Navajos have come up to talk with me while I've been painting on the reservation, but they have approached me quietly, and asked if it was OK to talk and to look. This happens on the Eastern Shore, too, and I do appreciate it.
Here are my two paintings in the landscape
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Around the Region
Matthew Bia works the desk at the Microtel in Gallup where I stay during my time painting on the reservation. He is a nice guy, who answers a lot of my questions, and is interested in my painting. He says that he and the staff at the Microtel work seven days a week, just to make ends meet. Below, Historic Route 66, near the hotel where I stay. Hotels and gas stations and convenience stores line up on Route 66 west of Gallup. There's a strange 7- or 8-mile gap between the commercial area on the west side, and old, downtown Gallup to the east.
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Saw this guy riding, out on the reservation, and, as you can see, walking up the hills.
I love this small metal building, gray as the February trees that surround it.
On a day when the wind makes me stop painting, in the Petrified Forest, I drive into the
non-national-park area of the Painted Desert, on the way to Keam's Canyon.
Here's my van, about halfway through the trip.
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Dog of the Day
Saw this mastiff at the show in Tubac. He was sweet, but very slobbery!
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