Aspen, Colorado

That's it for now.

Julia Pfeifer State Park at Big Sur

Big Sur

I've been painting this coast for a long time. 

I remembered some lines of poetry I wrote in 1996 here:

http://gregorybottspoetry.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-sur.html

I like the juxtaposition of the old and new site paintings and what they generate in the studio.

Coal Oil Point Reserve

West Campus Reserve

I taught out here in the 80's. It is where my relationship with the landscape began. My friend Hank Pitcher has been painting this for 40 years and has a beautiful show up now in town.

Santa Barbara

Walt Whitman in the poem "Facing Pacific Shores," he looks at the Pacific Ocean and asks writes, "and why is it yet unfound?" By the way Walt never saw the Pacific Ocean.

Sierras and Deep Springs College

I taught at Deep Springs College in 1995. This is a great entry into California. The Sierras loom up like nothing else right from the Owens Valley Floor to the 14,000 foot Mt Whitney.

Deep Springs is a great place reading Melville and Nietzsche in the Desert, they also cowboy through their stay herding cows into the mountains and delivering calves on freezing cold starlit evenings. To say the least a romantic place! In the literary sense.

Zion National Park

It's really hard to paint here. No where to get off the road. Everyone has a certain behavior in motion and if they see me painting they all stop like they saw a bear -- I knew a spot that no onecould see me,  I painted there before. It's really hot and I found a spot of shade with the view.

The moon was just setting behind the mountains at around noon.

North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ

From Monument Valley all of a sudden one is at 8,500 ft at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Last evening there was a monumental lightning storm, I was ready to die. Never experienced anything like it continuous flashes and thunder for an hour louder and brighter than I've ever seen.

This morning it was in the 50's. Had my down jacket on.

Two more in Monument Valley

 Last evening and this morning.

New Mexico to Arizona

Approach to Monument Valley. I painted a bit off the road to avoid all the French and German tourists driving RV's like-- well I dont know what.

Goosenecks is maybe a better place to stay as they have removed the campground from Monument Valley and put up an awful hotel.

One wonders what anyone thinks?

Always wanted to paint this. I was on a river trip 10 years ago and we arrived to this monument from our entry in Bluff Utah. A great rip which I painted the river and petroglyphs.

This classic view is now the dump. It used to be the best campground in America. Now they have built a Mall like hotel and taken out the facilities for the camping? Who knows?

Off to California

via Monument Valley and Grand Canyon.

And --- New Mexico!

Painting Along the Road Statement.

I feel a bit unsettled as I arrive in New Mexico and see the paintings from my trip.

First, I never really painted back east, as the easy character and familiarity to where I was born in Pennsylvania has not interested me.

The western landscape implies more of an adventure.

Second, these places, and their shapes and colors found-- start to order themselves in my mind, and that process has not begun as of yet in the eastern subject.

The studio work of blowing these paintings up and sending them through the processes of my work give these places their reality to me.

As of now they seem raw, old fashioned somewhat and not all to my liking. It is this uneasiness though I need to sit with to allow a real authenticity and as I believe a final meaning to me is to result.

Third,  I'm not sure why do this in public. One thing that bothers me is how people see me as out there-- having a good time. It implies there is nothing much beneath this activity. Being in public keeps me moving. I'd wish for a more insightful comment though to meet my own level of work and commitment.

Finally I think my process of going out and using the results could be enjoyed by more artists. The bystander, the critic, too--  and finally create a different culture or at least my own personal culture of how things could be a yes rather than a no.

That the Earth, and this relates to the dangerous moment our planet suffers, can influence a choice to make art about how things could be rather than the ironies we all know too well by now.

Well this is my constant idealization, ordered it makes a poetry and my painting practice back in the studio.

I guess that is it for now.

Heat kind of stifled any more painting 110' is hot. Beautiful though-- it continued into Southern New Mexico. Now home in Northern New Mexico there is a new scene, the wild fires.

Big Bend National Park

This is the kind of adventure I look for when painting cross country.

Most of my time here was logistical, planning how to make a painting out there exposed to the 105- to 110' heat.

I waited the day out and these were made around 7:00 in the evening.