Maggie's Rock

 

Maggie’s Rock

15" x 12"

Acrylic on Reclaimed Cabinet Door

 

West of Durango, about 40 minutes, Cherry Creek Road travels a stunning green valley dotted with cottonwoods, pines, and cattle. Of the many picturesque choices along the road, the butte to the east caught my eye.

It’s kind of funny how plein air paintings tend to come with a weather story. This piece is no exception. This was a two-part painting. The first time my painting buddy and I went out, we were driven back to our cars by a bitingly cold wind carrying snow from the ridge behind us. I barely blocked in the basic components of the landscape before I gave in, my hands clumsy from the cold. A month later, we gave it another try and the weather cooperated, allowing me to finish the piece.

On that second day, we hadn’t been painting long when an SUV pulled up and the driver called out, “How wonderful to see artists out here! I see you are painting Maggie’s Rock”. I went over to the car, and she went on to tell me that Maggie’s Rock was on land owned by Louie L’Amour. “Wow," I responded, thinking, hmmm, that’s interesting, but he’s dead and I didn’t think he had ever owned property in the area—though—fun fact—he wrote many of his novels in a room in Durango's Strater Hotel. We talked for a bit and then she wished us well and drove off.

A little later, another driver came down the road and stopped to see what we were doing. “I see you’re painting Maggie’s Rock,” she said, and I told her another person had informed me of that.

“The lady I talked to earlier told me that Louie L’ Amour owns that property,” I said, wanting to confirm that bit of information.

“No,” she replied, “the Ute Tribe owns that land. The caretaker’s name is Louie…you see him all the time driving around in his pickup truck.”

Her family had owned property in the valley for generations, so I concluded she had a better idea of the area’s history.

She went on to say that it’s called Maggie’s Rock because a long time ago someone named Maggie fell off the rock and died. It reminded me of how the Navajo people name places for notable events, such as “Where Two Fell Off” in Canyon de Chelly.

We talked for a bit more before she headed on her way and I went back to my painting.

This piece is painted on the center panel of a cabinet door, which has a “built-in” frame. I started with the center panel painted a rusty-red color, which you can see peeking through in various places in the painting.

Animas Anabranch

Animas Anabranch

15” x 10”
Watercolor

I found this lovely spot where a branch of the Animas River departs from the main channel in a location you might not expect—behind the museum in Farmington, New Mexico about an hour south of home. The trees had yet to show their leaves this early spring day, however the muted colors and grace of the bare cottonwoods caught my eye.

When I left home it was 34 degrees, so I had layered up to be ready for a cool and windy painting session along the Animas River.

But as usual, spring had a surprise up its sleeve, thumbing its nose at the weather report and warming up well beyond the day’s prediction, which foretold rain at noon. By the time my painting session came to a close, it was 78 degrees and I was overdressed!

Despite that, it was a gorgeous wind-free day. I drove into the rain on the way home.

Chokecherry Canyon

 Chokecherry Canyon
12” x 12”
Acrylic on Canvas

I can’t think of a better way to spend the day than being outside and painting. While you may have to contend with wind, rain, snow, or heat—wind is the worst—there is something really satisfying about capturing a landscape while you are immersed in it.

When I’m along a lake or stream, I like to use water from those sources as my painting water to incorporate the place into my piece. Sometimes when it’s windy, I accidentally incorporate local soil or rocks into a painting. 😊

I recently attended a “paint out” with a regional group of plein air painters. I’ve enjoyed discovering new places to paint and meeting other artists. The group spreads out in a location and paints for about 3 hours and then comes together for a critique. It’s been a good exercise in working quickly to capture the essence of a site. Of course, using a small canvas helps with that effort.

Chokecherry Canyon was a nice surprise. It’s an ATV recreation area and luckily, there were no ATVs buzzing down the canyon the day we were there. Filled with interesting rock formations and hoo doos, it provided plenty of great spots to set up our gear. We had clear blue skies and ideal weather, which though unseasonably warm was appreciated by all. And, the wind didn’t come up until it was about quitting time.

Summer Joy

 

Summer Joy
10” x 8”
Reduction Relief Print
Limited Edition of Seven

In August, we went on a mini-garden tour. It was wonderful and inspiring. One of the gardens was part of a farm, that in addition to a greenhouse jam packed with an obscene bounty of vegetables, there were rows and rows of flowers grown from which the farmer makes natural fabric dyes (check out farmandfolk.com).

When I saw the row of Rudbeckia (which I learned yields a lovely pale gold dye), I knew the blossoms would be a fine subject for the reduction process. But it took me a few months to come back to this image. 

First, I did a rough drawing and then a second drawing using colored markers to think through each color. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of the reduction technique, though this time, I forgot to reverse the image when I transferred it to the plate. However, I think I like the final print better with the image reversed. 

We’ve had an extremely dry and warm winter. It was starting to feel like early spring—but without any green. I think that's what drew me to the subject. 

Ironically, as I carved the plate for the final color pass of black ink, the weather changed and winter finally arrived, bringing us a good eight inches of snow. And there was more on the way…last night gave us another eight inches. Let the shoveling begin!

Summer Still Life & A New Obsession

 

Summer Still Life
8” x 10”
Limited Edition Relief Print

I tried my hand at another reduction print, inspired by a photo I took last summer: the veggies dramatically bathed in bright sunlight, casting deep shadows across the surface. 

The reduction process, as I've mentioned before, is a bit scary. And for me, highly unpredictable. Determining what to cut and what to leave is still very challenging. While the process results in a limited number of prints, that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's only so much room in the studio after all. 

This piece was a welcome relief from my latest obsession, weaving. In early November I purchased a table loom and have been learning how to weave. My technique is rather crude at this point, and I’ll need hours decades of practice to improve. 

My first piece was experimenting with basic weaving (“plain weave”) and then creating simple shapes and patterns. I tore out the yarn many times and reworked many areas and at one point, accidentally cut my warp (the framework you weave the yarn, or “weft” through) and had to totally start over. However, I was not discouraged and kept at it. For any weavers out there, please excuse my amateur results. I hope to continue to improve.

Next, I jumped right to something complicated (yeah, no baby steps here) when I decided to try to create a landscape. Again, I “unwove” and rewove most of the piece several times to repair mistakes and after several weeks, finally finished it. I’m not crazy about it as it lost something through several reworkings. Plus, the craftsmanship is still very rough, but I learned a LOT and have seen incremental improvement.
 

High Country, Fall
16.5” x 12”

I was midway through completing the landscape piece for the second time (when I decided I needed a break) and created Summer Still Life.

Currently I’m experimenting with a smaller piece to learn “wedge weaving” …stay tuned for notes on how that turns out.

Reduction Printing: Madness?

Yellows & Greens

8” x 10”
Hand-rubbed Relief Print
Limited Edition

I was inspired by a summer day’s harvest of yellow squash and tomatillos. It seemed like a good subject to try using the reduction process to create the image. With the reduction process, you continually cut away portions of the plate, which results in the plate having only the material left that prints the color, which in this case, was a grey-black.

With relief printing, there are many steps. It’s kind of scary, really, as you have to get to the end of the steps to determine whether the result is successful or not. I'm still learning the reduction process and my efforts are still a bit crude.

First I start with a drawing.

 

Then, I trace the drawing. When the image is transferred to the plate, the tracing is flipped so the image is backward.

I then strengthen the image on the plate. In the image below, I have cut away the areas I want to be white.

Here, I have printed a lighter and a darker yellow, plus a light green. With each pass, I cut away the part of the plate that printed the colors I want to keep. You are overprinting lighter areas with the next darker color. 

It is really easy to accidentally cut away more than you planned to remove, which adds a level of challenge and excitement to the process. It's also difficult to capture the nuance of shape that you can with a drawing. Cutting shapes is tricky. 

Even though I have a system to help register each printing pass, another issue is miss-aligning the paper to the plate when you transfer each color.

Below, I have printed a slightly darker green and a blue. 

In the final image, you can see I printed the golden brown and then the gray-black.

 Viola! I started with 14 sheets and ended up with 10 final prints. It's not just art, it's an adventure!

Viola!