Sidetracked Charley

Fall of Stars 20 x 30 Mixed Media on Artists canvas $1350 Next to last of the End of Days series? When did the series begin? Is it even a series? Maybe it is really a period like Picasso's Blue Period. What binds these paintings together? I sat down in my studio to play with doing an interview on video and while working on framing, how to put a painting into the frame with me, where was the best lighting in my studio, an incredible dryness in my mouth making talking difficult, what came out after a sip of water and swallowing was the End of Days series. Now with a friend coming over to interview me I am struck by what to say. I have thought of a group of paintings I began after I dared to not paint churches. They are largely canyons, my cathedrals, though here and there is a pueblo or ruin of the before people. There is nothing special about those really. I have always been drawn to the architecture of ancient ruins and yes, canyons. And old mission churches in New Mexico which I s...

The one major problem with planning a vacation in the Colorado Plateau area of the western United States is there is absolutely too much to see! And the map above leaves out  Arches National Park because it is not on the Colorado River but above it. The first road trip that my sister and I took to Utah we just sampled several of the parks but this year we have decided to focus on the parts of Arches we did not do justice after the broken camera. And Canyonlands National Park which we just barely took in. "We glide along through a strange, weird, grand region. The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock." —Explorer John Wesley Powell, 1869. Canyonlands National Park protects and preserves an immense, wild, desert wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau. Sculpted mainly by water, including by the Green and Colorado rivers, this wilderness contains hundreds of colorful canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches, and spires. Prior to the park’s establ...

Unnamed Arch in the Maze area of Canyonlands, Utah Life becomes just so much keeping on keeping on unless you have a dream to move toward. Long range goals and dreams that are rather nebulous because of their distance from your point in time are, of course, necessary but they too often fade from our focus. And short term plans like the fair I have at the end of the month are about the same as making payments on all your bills; more of just putting one foot in front of another. It is the middle range dream that is the most fun. My sister and I have engaged in the infamous Thelma and Louise Road trip three times before and found we had almost as much fun researching, plotting, planning, and equipping as we did finally setting out. We had not ventured out on a grand road trip since our 2006 adventure on Lake Powell. The minute we got into cell phone range after eight days in a technological black hole she received the call from Alan, her husband in Texas, that he had a job interview...