20 October 2012

Flannelbush Road

Flannelbush Road, watercolor on Arches, 16" x 12" 
This place had a mystery about it.  When one pasture was completely mowed, cattle were moved in to clean this one and then another.  It keeps the fire fuels under control which I saw during a swiftly moving brush fire nearby and saves the land from overgrazing.  The mystery part is no one really thought it was all that beautiful, especially not worthy of a painter's effort.  I supposed this is because just over that hill, there is a panoramic view that extends for perhaps 50 miles, with graduating lavender blue mountain mists, a valley, lowing cattle, the checkerboard of crops, etc.  But the vision in the painting is one of those places with a little turnout where one could stop and  linger and feel the season on your body and listen to the wind.  All those times I spent there in non doing was in honor to the simplicity and sanity of Nature.  The paved edge in the forefront of this view is lined with overhanging Flannelbush, a flowering tree that survived the Pleistocene over 15 million years ago.  The fire stopped abruptly at the Flannelbush tree.

06 October 2012

Sodabox at High Noon

18" x 24" watercolor on Arches


This one's for William Carlos Williams 


so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel barrow 

glazed with rainwater 

beside the white 

chickens.