What Could Be Better?

...than Colorado in June? Not much.
Even better, to be OUT with other painters, from other places who come to the valley. It is like a cultural exchange.
Louise Minks,  comes to Alamosa a couple of times a year from her home in Leverett, Massachusetts, to visit her daughter - and to teach classes at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.
We met up at the beginning of June with Sue McCullough, out at Sue's ranch and enjoyed a morning painting the sweet little Model A that Sue's dad is so proud to show off.
Louise is primarily an acrylic painter and captures the spirit of our western landscape with fabulous color and abstraction. I seldom see, really good acrylic painters, using the medium as it is meant to be used and I am a big fan. She shows her work in Taos at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art - where I am also represented.

I devoted the morning to sketching, something I am trying to devote more time to, instead of always working to a finished painting. Cars are not a big part of what I do in the landscape but the practice time drawing- especially such a fun model, is never wasted.
Click on the photos to enlarge them and see how Louise and Sue tackled the car.

Painting With Friends

Summer and good weather brings artists together and last weekend I met up with Josh Been and Sally Mather to paint in Buena Vista, CO.
Sunday brought Colorado some crazy weather, state- wide, with a couple of tornadoes and golf ball size hail, BUT Saturday was more than perfect- and I am grateful.  We met before dawn at the Collegiate Peaks Overlook for a stellar view of Mt. Princeton as the sun rose.
Sally, Josh and myself, are very different painters with contrasting vision and widely divergent outcomes  - but on a perfect morning -  being OUT there is brings us together.