Howdy from Santa Fe New Mexico. Thank heavens for rainy days. Louise and I left Canada on Oct.5 to head for the sunny south Texas, via Colorado and New Mexico and this is the first rain we have seen. So I can get some work done, Oh I can hear you “first rain poor you”. Well let me tell you it’s not all fun and games out here on the road. We have to decide what scenic places we can squeeze into our very busy schedule, what lunches to pack or eat out. Then there is editing all the photos I shoot looking for the perfect painting. It is tough that is why I like the occasional rainy day
Colorado was great, we spent a week around Colorado Springs, took the train ride up the Royal Gorge, very scenic but I like the out of the way places so I dragged Louise on 2, 4 wheel drive roads that were only enough room for the truck so if you were unfortunate to meet an oncoming vehicle, one had to back up for a long way. The scenery was pristine and spectacular. I think I have a couple of paintings in that group. We found Victor, an old Gold mining town with a lot of the old building left to see and photograph. Victor still has an operational open pit mine, quite a scar on the landscape, and you can get there via black top but that’s not as much fun as driving Phantom Canyon an old narrow gauge rail road pass that transported the gold ore to Canon or The Shelf Road that used to be a stage coach road to Cripple Creek. The Shelf is the road that really got Lou. She was on the outside with a hundred foot drop with just enough room for the truck and a lot of twists and up and downs. All I saw was a rock face.
OK enough of that. Let’s talk about atmosphere. Colorado 6500’ to 10500’ the air was crisp and the colours the same. Sharp, vibrant with lots of contrast like I am used to in Canada and the Eastern US. Beautiful deep shadows, Alizarin Crimson and Prussian Blue.
Now let’s talk about New Mexico. First Louise will not let me near a 4 wheel drive road (I kid). We have been on some driving tours from our home base just south of Santa Fe. Taos was the first, we got up before dawn to catch the sun rising over the canyons on our way (see I told you it was tough out here, we don’t sleep in all day). The thing I have noticed in NM is the lack of contrast and I think it is all the light reflecting into the shadows from the exposed rock and sand. Not to say it isn’t spectacular, I am looking at the scenes from a painter’s perspective. The canyons are awesome, but subtle. I am not and neither is my style.
We visited the Taos Pueblo that should be named the Red Willow Pueblo for the wonderful peoples that have inhabited it forever, before the Spanish. It is the oldest continuously occupied village in North America and is still inhabited today. I took a lot of pictures and asked about painting a scene from their Pueblo. I have painted one of the scenes that I photographed and to the wishes of the Red Willow Tribe this will be going into our private collection, if it is ever sold I want ½ of the proceeds to go to the Red Willow council to help their peoples.
I started this painting (the only one since we left, too busy) in my usual way. I always do an under painting first to get the colour and contrast balance and correct any compositional errors. As I was painting with brush I could not see this scene lending it’s self to a heavy knife effect. This painting is 2 colours and white, Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine Blue.
I am keeping the painting the way it is because I think putting a knife effect on it will spoil the scene adding too much texture. The next painting will be from Ghost Ranch where Georgia O’Keefe resided and painted.
More about that later.
Brian
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