Spring in the San Luis Valley

One word describes it: WIND.
The demon wind, the devil wind, the deadly wind. It rattles your teeth, sucks out your breath, your will to live and makes the house shriek and moan like a live thing in the throws of death, one rusty nail at a time. It's enough to make you mental, or worse, wax nostalgic about winter painting when the temps hardly got above 0 for weeks at a time.
May came in like a dove, but I was in Taos, then Durango, then Buena Vista and the last two weeks have been screamers. Now the kids are out of school and any sense of a work schedule went out with the Memorial Day weekend garbage. So it is a small consolation when I wake up to gale force wind and know - I probably couldn't go out anyway.

It was a dark and stormy night. . .

It seems like ages since I last posted - and it isn't that I haven't been "daily painting", I just haven't had time to post - that's code for - I haven't had a chance to wrestle my panel box, pull out the wet panels, sign them, and wait for a day when it isn't 10 below zero to take photos, kill an afternoon editing photos and writing witty banter. Painting is the easy part.
A large studio piece is near finish in the studio and Sue Mc and I went up to South Fork Monday to do some gallery business with Jan Bock at Mountain Artisans Gallery. Afterwards we pulled the plein air mobile off into a snow bank and pulled out the gear. It must have been a balmy 18 degrees- which was ok- but the wind- oh, the wind- it cuts like a knife. In the end we didn't do any painting but I snapped this shot of Blanca as I drove home. This is why I live in Colorado.

Daily Painter Goes to Estes Park

Artists gathered at the home of Mike and Rebecca Barrett (owners of the LINK Gallery) for food and art talk. I met Victoria Brooks a wonderful plein air painter from California. She was looking for someone willing to meet up before dawn to catch the early light on the mountains in the Rocky Mt National Park. I'm game- who cares about sleep, I'll probably be to wound up to sleep anyway.

Painting in Ruidoso, New Mexico

Here I am painting models in the landscape.

This week (May 6-13) I am painting in Ruidoso, New Mexico with Kim English and friends. This area is so beautiful and we are in a wonderful art retreat setting- but hardly have time to notice because we are doing about 12 paintings a day.
. . . . .and I thought plein air work was tiring.
Here are three great Painters taking a break.