New Paintings at JTAG

This newly finished painting is now being shown at the Joshua Tree Art Gallery, JTAG...

Other gallery artists David Burnham and Karine Swenson also have new work.

DAYBREAK               oil on canvas          30" x 40"

Flowers Still Blooming in the Park

Joshua Tree National Park is unusually green for the end of May, most certainly due to our unusually cool spring weather...

the late winter carpets of wildflowers are gone, but there are lots of small clumps of flowers,  and blooming bushes:

these are so tiny they make the grains of sand look like good-sized pebbles

I even found some Lupine still blooming in a wash

Beauty All Day

Morning:  Happy Garden

red chard and lettuce loving the cool spring weather

Evening:  pink jet trail with Venus (barely visible to the camera near the lower right corner)

Paradise Ridge Painting

PARADISE RIDGE      oil on canvas       16" x 20"  

...these seemingly abandoned homesteads have million dollar views...

Tanagers Eating Mulberries

the mulberry tree in its 5th year

young male Western Tanager, its red feathers coming in on its head

female Western Tanager

there were 4 or 5 of these in the tree at once, eating mulberries, which are very good, and I rarely get to taste one;  the birds get there first...and I get to watch them...

Antelope Squirrel eating mulberry dropped by birds

May Storm

clouds gathered very fast this morning, and by 9:30 we had tiny hail falling briefly...earlier, when I was out walking in the cold wind, I found this lemon butterfly:

 I brought it inside, thinking it was too cold for it...very quickly it started to move and when I went to pick it up it clung to my warm finger...I took it back outside and put it close to the house out of the wind...

Flies and Flycatchers

All this moisture has brought more flies...and more flycatchers....such perfection.
They perch and tilt their heads this way and that, looking around,  and suddenly fly out and catch a flying thing...

Western Kingbird (through window screen)

Western Kingbird looking the other way...these flash such a lovely lemon yellow as they fly...

Say's Phoebe

Ash-Throated Flycatcher

Ash-Throated Flycatcher again

Desertscape

(untitled)                    oil on canvas             16" x 20 "

New Flower

First flower of  the year on the purple cactus

Beautiful Visitor

This is the most beautiful snake I have ever seen.

I was transfixed, watching its fat shiny black and white three and a half feet of perfection moving through my garden and then hunting around the foundation of my house.

moving to hide under a beavertail cactus and broom bush

yellow broom flowers with the mountains of Joshua Tree National Park to the south

today walking I found these tiny white flowers I have never seen before, each flower only a quarter of an inch in diameter

Desert Creatures

Mockingbird dancing with Joshua Tree

cottontail with his eye on me, ready to run

Broom and Cholla

cholla flowers

bumper crop of broom out here in far north Joshua Tree

broom growing with amazing green bush

Desert Living

sometimes the wind kicks up so much sand that it screens the morning sun and we can see the shape of the sun and marvel that it appears to be the same size as the moon...of course before telescopes people thought all those things out there were orbiting around us...now I see images in my head of our tiny earth in the huge bright blackness, and the giant fireball star 93 million miles away...and yet it is hard not to say "the sun is coming up"... 

SANDCLOUD SUNRISE       oil on canvas     12" x 12"

Red Yucca Flower

a close look at the first red yucca flower

More Desert Scents

today I discovered that the prolific and sometimes maligned Desert Dandelion is one of the biggest contributors to the sweet smell that is everywhere in the air these days

these tiny flowers smell like delicate lilac...they are blooming on a quickly growing tree that I bought after being told it is an Umbrella tree, and some think it is a Chinaberry tree...they do smell like heaven, whatever they are called...

Sweet Desert Air

The sweet smell of broom is everywhere

mingled with the rich aroma of the datura, which is edged with violet this year

I had to bring it inside

Big Moon

BIG MOON    oil on paper    8" x 10"

Now and Then

This painting, along with others, is newly installed at JTAG:

EQUINOX     oil on canvas    12" x 12"

and a sample of what I was painting in 1968:

TWO PEOPLE   mixed media    14" x 18"