Desert Ruins

"Desert Ruins"
5x7 inches
Acrylic on panel
Genre: landscape

These ruins are on the Dorgas-Sublett hiking trail in Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA. In the background are the Chisos Mountains.

Big Bend Adobe Ruins -- and a Rabbit

Title: Big Bend Adobe Ruins

Medium: Acrylic on panel

Size: 6x6 inches

Genre: Landscape

Can't stop painting the Big Bend area, so I'm just going to continue. This is the Dorgan-Sublett trail, which is near the Santa Elena Canyon, and features 2 or 3 adobe ruins. The cliffs in the background are in Mexico, and in between runs the Rio Grande. The part where there is green grass in the way back is near the river bank.

Title: "Rabbit, Revered"

Medium: Acrylic on panel

Size: 7x5 inches

Genre: Fantasy, Magic Realism

Just a bit of fun with a bunny and an Ionic column. The bunny is really a ceramic figurine, and the column is one that I made out of clay, just for paintings such as this one. 

Big Bend Sotol

Title: Big Bend Sotol
Size: 5x7 inches
Genre: Landscape
Medium: Acrylic

Lately I've been painting landscapes. I'd been wanting to paint the Big Bend, Texas area for quite some time, but lacked the confidence. Every year for many years, my husband and I have made a pilgrimage there. I feel a familiarity and a love for that vast, beautiful, desolate, and formidible place. I've finally taken the leap into portraying it, and am very glad. For the time being I'm painting it from photos, but eventually may add plein aire into the mix.

This is a departure from my usual work, but I've decided not to limit myself when it comes to genre, and paint what I feel like painting. I love that kind of freedom.

Here are a couple more of them. Click here to see them at Daily Paintworks.

"Big Bend Window, Back View" 8x10 inches, acrylic

"River Bend" 8x10, acrylic

Sea Shanty

"Sea Shanty"

Size: 24x30

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Genre: Fantasy

SOLD! 

Rapunzel underwater

sang as mermaids do.

A shining seahorse drew her 

from her shanty of a tower,

and when the pair took flight,

morphed into a stately knight,

because she asked him to.

This one combines a trip to the Terlingua Ghost Town with of my love of underwater scenes. Terlingua is in the Big Bend area of Texas, and parts of that desert landscape were once under sea many eons ago. The Ghost Town has many fascinating adobe houses in various states of decomposition-- one of which particularly caught my eye and ended up in this painting. Also shown are the desert mountains in the background. The dark areas in this painting will form a vague shape similar to the state of Texas if you squint your eyes and use your imagination.

What do desert and ocean have in common? Perhaps it is that they are teeming with life forms not usually seen unless you go looking for them, and that there is a sense of vast expanse experienced in both environments.

I started this painting back in 2014 and only now came back to finish it-- life had intervened; there was caregiving for a beloved family member, the Hospice time, and the aftermath of tying up all the loose ends that people leave behind.