Changing Seasons Painting

this is a big one:

CHANGING SEASONS 1     oil on canvas        48" x 44"

CHANGING SEASONS 2       oil on canvas      48" x 44"

here it is as a diptych (painting made up of two pieces):

CHANGING SEASONS       48" x 88"

(click image to enlarge)

Monday Morning, Clear Bright Cold

...great encounters and conversations at JTAG this weekend...thank you everyone!

here is a new joshua tree painting finished last week:

MORNING JOSHUA      oil on canvas    8" x 8"

  If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.     

—C.S. Lewis

(from Quotes of the Day)

Downtown Joshua Tree Retro

I will be at JTAG again today, in beautiful downtown Joshua Tree

here is the gallery, between Natural Sisters Cafe and the Joshua Tree Health Food store, with a fine vintage car parked out front...a few minutes after I took this photo I heard the car's owner ask a friend if it thought the car was worth the $40K he was asking for it, then drove proudly away in the crisp November morning air...

I am showing some of the paintings I did in the 60's, including these two:

YELLOW AND BLACK  india ink and watercolor on paper 12" x 18"

VIOLET AND ORANGE    watercolor on paper    12" x 18"

Curve on Orange Painting

CURVE on ORANGE          oil on canvas        16" x 16"

I will be at the Joshua Tree Art Gallery, JTAG, today, Saturday and tomorrow, Sunday, from 10am to 3pm.

Clear and Cold

30 degrees F feels balmy in the Colorado mountains at 9000' elevation, after temperatures as low as 5 degrees or even below zero...here in the high desert it feels very cold...and it is very crisp and beautiful....

new snow on Mt. Gorgonio, highest peak in the San Bernardino mountains

and then there is the silver moon in the crystal clear  sky

Forecast:

Cosmic Friends

talking with my friend C yesterday reminded me of the space images that belong to all of us...here is one:

Description from the Hubble site:

A brilliant white core is encircled by thick dust lanes in this spiral galaxy, seen edge-on. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light years from Earth.

Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The Music

(a poem by Rumi, the best selling poet in the USA)

For sixty years I have been forgetful,

every minute, but not for a second

has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed.

I deserve nothing.  Today I recognize

that I am the guest the mystics talk about.

I play this living music for my host.

Everything today is for the host.

 translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

from The Essential Rumi

JTAG Open Thanksgiving Weekend

photo by Frederick of my current work at the Joshua Tree Art Gallery (JTAG)... I will be hosting the gallery this Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 3pm....and this being a big shopping weekend, I can extend those hours to accommodate customers (email me)...I will be bringing in more little squares (two of these have been sold) as well as some small format landscapes...and other artists have new wonderful work if you have not seen our November show...other art projects are happening in JTAG in December and January, and the regular artists' work will return in February...

New Homestead Painting

TWO RED & WHITE CABINS     oil on linen       9" x 12"

$300. in floater frame as pictured

these cabins sit together on a ridge in NW Joshua Tree near 29 Palms

Full Moon Saturday Night

Moon rose pink last night, as far north as the summer solstice sunrise...

within 10 minutes it had turned to pale gold

Sky Weather

yesterday morning brought the sweet smell of rain...and a rainbow in the north...

and graceful cloud shadows across the Bullion Mountains...

all day we had strong wind and fast-moving clouds

delights of light and shadow

(I imported these large so you can click images to see bigger...still such a tiny fraction of this enormous desert sky)

Roadrunner Update

Roadrunner is still hanging around...in yesterday afternoon's cloudy coolness, it was taking refuge (napping after lunch?) in its nightly lair...

Carolina Jasmine silhouetted as the sun appears this morning

looking closely, I saw the roadrunner was in its roost, with its tail, black and white underneath, upright now, and not so obvious as when it remained straight out...

...casting its long November shadow

Desert Patterns

nothing left of the mattress but the coils of the springs

late afternoon light on disintegrating wall coverings and paint

Migrating Monarch

this visitor spent several hours in the middle of the day yesterday gathering energy from the Blanket Flowers..

the Blanket Flowers are from a drought-resistant high altitude wildflower mix that I brought from Colorado...they need water only a couple of times a year...

now it has moved on...

Drawn to Paradise

a cabin that friends are fixing up as a vacation rental...they used to stay here for vacations, then bought it and lived in it while they built a larger home nearby...below is a sitting area on its east side

view towards the SW and Mt. Jacinto

Northeast of Joshua Tree

looking west, the San Bernardino Mountains in the distance...less than 100 miles beyond them are Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean

looking southwest the top of Mt. Jacinto can be seen...this towers over Palm Springs, almost 3000 feet in altitude lower than our "high desert"

Mid-November Painting

NOVEMBER AFTERNOON WASH        oil on canvas     8" x 8"  

 US$ 200.

Day: Light and Heat

45 degrees F this morning just before sun up, five degrees warmer than it has been for a week...the difference feels mild as if spring were around the corner...now a half hour after the sunrise it is another 5 degrees warmer....and the lights I turned on in the house when I awoke look dull...such a miracle, all these round forms turning in the vast open spaces, a giant one heating and lighting us from 93 million miles away...the roundness and the turning giving time to cool each part before it is heated again...and giving us tiny beings time to notice the stars...

Yesterday a Dragonfly

what would it be like to have six legs and two pairs of glistening transparent wings, veined like leaves?

Desert Golf Balls

from time to time new golf balls appear on the desert floor

sometimes far from the road near a dormant bush

 

sometimes in the road...someone nearby is obviously practicing...just once I saw two men with golf clubs looking as if they were searching around my neighbor's house...

Little Circle with Blue Rays

CIRCLE with BLUE RAYS        oil on canvas         6" x 6"

November Morning

one of my favorite cacti...close-ups below:

backlit in the morning sun

and of course the Joshua Tree reigning over all...