I'm poring over the thousands of photographs I took in Australia and making rough visual notes, earmarking some for further consideration. The process for future paintings starts with this step. I collect the figures, objects, settings, events, and visual arrangements that hold some kind of power for me, some of which will be pieced together later.

Sometimes I seize upon specific elements because of the important personal experiences they represent for me--others are worth noting because they're rife with potential in terms of metaphor, humor, complexity, or visual richness. And sometimes it's just about the color or lighting of an object, or a stranger's expression caught in passing.

Bless the long weekend. I had time enough to finish the new painting.

I meant to post progress pictures, but camera issues have been rampant recently, and I resolved not to let technical difficulties hold up the real work. So! Here it is all at once. (Click on the image to see it larger, if you like.)

It's 13 x 19, acrylic on panel. I'm pretty pleased with it.

So, on to the next!

Here's the little sketchbook I carried at Ghost Ranch.

When I say little, I do mean little--especially compared to the books I've hauled around on previous trips. The pages shown below are about 3 by 5 inches.

Sketching was limited by only being able to work in short bursts. For one thing, it was cold! I know how wimpy that sounds, but seriously. For another, I was there as a volunteer, so often I was drawing on field trips while the college kids roamed around--so my time wasn't so much my own; there was none of the "ten more minutes to get this right" that I usually permit myself. When it was time to meet back at the van, it was time to meet back at the van, no cross-hatching about it.

I also did a little experimenting with water-soluble wax pastels--which, by the way, are cool. I've never been able to get effects I like with watercolor, so they didn't really do the trick for me; but they were a good alternative when color was called for but it was too cold to use water in the field; I colored with them outside, then added water to blend them later when thawing indoors.

A great month. Back at home, and working on paintings in the studio.

So--stealing just a moment to post, because I'm exhausted, but too thrilled to lose the moment; just a few images from Ghost Ranch, where I've been spending the last week and a half. I'll post sketches and studies when I get home next week.

Ever since I moved to Albuquerque I've had an especial respect for 516 ARTS, a contemporary nonprofit artspace downtown. The programming is varied and inventive, the space is big and beautiful, the work is always carefully selected and displayed to good effect, the staff gets stuff done and gets it done well; and all the while everything is done with an eye on community interests.

It's been an unspoken hope of mine for the past couple of years to get work in there somehow, and the opportunity has recently presented itself in the form of a regional showcase juried by Peter Frank (currently of the Huffington Post, formerly of all sorts of other stuff).

I have gotten a painting in, which is very exciting--it also happens to be one of the ten thumbnails appearing on the exhibition's website (right alongside a piece by my buddy Luanne Redeye!):

The show opens Feb 4th, from 6-8 pm, and runs through April 28th. Hope to see you there if you're within driving distance!

In October I went to a conference at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. It was worthwhile for lots of reasons: exposure to exciting, strange work being made in the field; talks by artists I've long respected; spending time with new and old friends who are far-flung across the country (and in some cases across the globe); and last, but not least--solo road trip.

I camped out during the conference's duration, then took an errant, rambling route home. On the drive, I had an idea for a new body of work...not worth explaining yet, but it has to do with sublime landscape and multiple compounded horizon lines. I rambled about it to my camera (set on video mode while I drove)--impassioned, excited snippets of thought that make much less sense now than they did in context. I don't know how those pieces will work, so don't hold me to it, but the point is, I went out of my way to look for sublime scopes/scapes, cutting through Yosemite, Death Valley, and bits of the Mojave, and skirting the Grand Canyon. This resulted in tons of photographs and a couple of nice landscape studies.

6"x12", acrylic on hardboard

6"x12", acrylic on hardboard

The other thing that's happened recently is I fully documented my travel journal from Australia (hence the video in my last post). Here are a couple of pages from that:

Having all these things together, I reorganized my website gallery to reflect a category that's becoming more and more prominent in my practice: travelogues and field studies. Check it out if you'd like to see some extra sketches from recent travels!

The (mostly) completed AU field studies journal.