Fall is in the air. School has started. I find myself bouncing back and forth between my new art students at school and being out in the mountains on my annual fall hunting retreat with my brothers and my sons. In the past I have taken my paint box along to the mountains and worked some small compositions while not out hiking around the mountains. I have opted for my digital camera and sketch book this year. I plan on diving in to the studio and recording every wonderful moment I am witnessing. It is amazing to be out in the forest at 10,000 feet and just listen to the wind sing in the trees, or stand in a spruce thicket and have squirrels drop pine cones on your head as they scold you vigorously. It is cool to look up and see the early morning clouds just racing past as they catch those first rays of sunlight. In the evening the intense last orange-red sunlight on the tops of the peaks and edging the clouds looks like glorious glowing hot metal. As I list these things I am reminded that I spend to much time indoors. Well it is back to school and then back to the mountains.I love wearing my three “hats” this time of year, artist, educator and hunter its an interesting combination, I find myself looking for compositions or just admiring the way the light carves its way across a meadow while I am supposed to be hunting…… I guess that’s why I am not a very successful hunter. I almost always come home empty handed.
Watch for the new paintings coming soon……Cozumel, Arches, Buffalo Peak and whatever I see the next couple of weekends.
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Greetings, I had the chance to go fly fishing with my son Nathan. We got up early and went up along the Provo river near Vivien park. The darn fish were not interested in our flies no matter how we presented them. We stayed in the cold water for about an hour and a half and along with whipping the water with my fly line I watched the sunshine creep down the south end of Mt. Timpanogos and bathe the canyon in bright August light.
Nathan and I decided to try our luck further down the river so we found ourselves near the mouth of Provo canyon standing in the water below the Murdock irrigation dam and finally we ended up on an old steel bridge, where we actually could see several nice brown trout feeding lazily in the clear shallow water. Fortunately for them (and us) they could see us too so nobody got hooked. After watching the fish for a few minutes I looked up stream to the east and decided I was done fishing and needed to get painting.
I wanted to capture the sunlight bouncing off the shallow stream contrasting against the shadowed foliage. I am still enjoying the palette knife. The way it deposits the color on the canvas seems good. I am painting another view from the old bridge. I will add it to this post soon.

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In this second version I tried to focus in on the contrast between the highlights on the water and the shadowed cottonwoods. Today I also worked on a drawing from my trip up to Buffalo peak. It is the view from the peak looking south towards the north face of “Y” mountain. I have also been working on some ideas from my recent family camping trip to Fish Lake.

I woke up yesterday morning and decided to go paint or draw something different as I left my house at 6:30 a.m. I looked east towards the mountains and something told me to go west to the desert. I drove out into western Utah along the historic Pony Express route. It must have been the ghost of Maynard Dixon who told me to go west. As the early morning sun lit up the desert peaks and wide valleys I was reminded of Dixon’s clean, simple and elegant compositions. If you read my blog you will discover that Maynard Dixon is one of my hero’s. I drove past several Pony Express markers and found myself out near Simpson Springs. I saw an interesting mountain to the south so I headed that way. I checked my GPS(Rhino 120) and noticed that I did not have the maps loaded for this particular part of Utah. For some unexplained reason I had neglected to tell my wife, Rhonda where I was headed as I was thinking that very thought my steering felt a little mushy. I was about 60 miles north of Delta, Utah that was my best chance at a cell signal I checked my phone and actually made contact with her although it was a very very poor connection. She was surprised when I told her I was out west. She had assumed that I was headed up into the mountains east of our home. I discovered that texting worked tons better so we continued our conversation via text messages. I am not very adept at that form of communication and I had to stop the vehicle for each text. On the second “text stop” I got out of the Jeep and noticed my left front tire was almost a pancake. I had been driving in and out of sand for 30 miles so I assumed the mushy felling I was getting was the sand….Not. To make matters worse to the south and west of me a large thunderstorm was brewing and the road I was on looked like it was a muddy beast when it got wet. I quickly repaired my tire and impatiently waited for my little compressor to do its thing while I watched the rain get closer. When the tire was pumped up I raced the storm across the desert, guessing at my route as my GPS and my jeep had no maps. After several snap road choices I made it to a gravel road north of the Little Sahara sand dunes just as the rain caught me. I was glad for a firm foundation. Well I took some interesting photos and made a couple of sketches but in all the fun I did not make a painting. Lessons learned today; tell someone where you are going, take a map or a loaded GPS with you, If the steering feels mushy check the tires and don’t go alone.

I oil painted this knife study based on a snapshot that I took a couple of weeks ago while Rhonda and I were hiking on the ridge trail above little deer creek. The ridge trail and alpine loop are areas where I have painted many paintings during the last few summers. One of the paintings I made in this area was part of the Midway Plein Air festival.
I am thoroughly enjoying painting with a knife again its almost as if I am carving the painting. The knife helps me suggest the landscape as opposed to describing it which is something I find myself doing when I use a brush.
I was up on Buffalo Peak yesterday again in the late afternoon with some of my family. Everyone was surprised at how green everything still is. Normally it has started to dry out by mid July at that altitude(7800-7900 ft). I plan on working the vistas in that Buffalo Peak area for the next couple of weeks so I better buy some green paint.

Some time this spring Rhonda and I are headed back to Cozumel. Last year when we went I did not expect to see the island with my artists eyes  I thought I would see it with my tourist eyes. My first surprise was how beautiful the water was from the air and from the beach and finally through a snorkel.  I was captivated by the experience of snorkeling above the reefs on the west side of the island.  I have tried to imagine how I could paint something that could capture that undersea feeling.  My efforts as a photographer may be how I express the snorkel experience.

The amazing experience from the trip was the absolutely sublime feeling I had when I first saw the east beaches of Cozumel.  I was nearly breathless.  I have stood on the edge of thousand foot cliffs where I could see more than a hundred miles.  I have seen hundreds of spectacular and sublime views of the Colorado Plateau. Maybe it is the fact that I have only had brief encounters with the ocean, but I fell in love with the color, the smell and power or the Caribbean surf on the east side of the island.  I have completed a dozen small paintings and a couple of large ones based on the little research I did last year.  The little 11 x 14  studio work which I  included in this post, I just completed. I can hardly wait to stand on that shore and soak it all up again with the eye of an artist.  Watch ebay this little painting will be offered up for sale or auction soon. ( I need to Pay for the trip)

Well I rang in the new year with a couple of hours painting on my Corona Arch painting and then Rhonda and I took our dog Supai on a short and sweet little cross country ski tour. The snow was ok… a little bit sticky but any time spent skiing is time well spent.
When we got home our house was filled with our entire family and we had an awesome new years dinner together. I’ll paint tomorrow.

Wow, I can’t get enough of the Moab area Rhonda, Dan and I spent the thanksgiving weekend there. I was happy to be able to do some pen and ink sketching in Arches National Park and some over at Dead Horse Point State park. The State park has built a wonderful Mt. Bike trail which treats the rider to some awe inspiring views. Many are the same views I painted back in the 1980′s I might need to scan some transparencies of that old work and share some of it or better yet maybe I will revisit those vistas with my brush.