Outside of Sedona - and Heading Home

Outside of Sedona

Oil on canvas, 10x10

Yes, I am headed home. Home! 

While part of me is sad that this trip is over, more of me is just missing home so deeply, I can taste it. Missing my husband, missing our dogs, missing my friends, missing my house and my studio and my beautiful little town. 

But I have had adventures, and wonderful pleasures, and I have seen amazing things and met wonderful, fascinating people. It has been the trip of a lifetime. 

This is one of the paintings I haven't posted yet - and there are a few more, which I will post once I reach Wachapreague. These are long, long driving days, with iffy internet connections at night... But lI'll get all the remaining paintings up on our Facebook page, on the blog, and on the California Calling page on the Jacobson Arts website. 

Meantime, I loved going through Colorado, which I haven't seen since I skied there as a kid. It was thrilling to see antelope, and huge, craggy snow-covered mountains, and to drive along at 7,000 feet, close, close, close to the clouds. 

It was not quite as wonderful to drive during a gale (60-mph gusts!) through Kansas, watching 18-wheelers sway and tip so dramatically, I got scared and got off the road early. 

But today, the wind was gone, and Kansas, with its rolling hills (yes, hills!) and huge, open spaces invited my mind to wander, and think, and imagine and dream. I loved Missouri, with beautiful farms and lots of good-looking cows. And Illinois, I saw in the evening dusk, warmed and sweetened by a soft, gentle sunset. 

 

Halfway through Missouri today, the land began to look like the East. Along the highway, deciduous trees grew, their wintry branches just starting to turn red at the tips. Houses were made of wood, with barns and horses and plowed fields. Lawns were grass, not gravel and cactus. It is the landscape I grew up with, the landscape I know. I've been away from it for two months, and it looks different and somehow new again. 

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Winter caught up to me in Colorado, with a blizzarding snowstorm that blew in on an amazing wind. The gale lasted long after the snow stopped falling - if you can call a horizontal path "falling." 

Can you imagine going to school out here? I think I was in Pecos Valley, NM. 

Here's me with hair as red as when I was a kid.

A farm in New Mexico, demanding to be painted. 

And yes, more dinos! These are outside of Santa Fe. 

Gorgeous sunrise in Colorado.

And crossing into Colorado. 

I am somehow not surprised that there are no services in Bovina. Bet there are lots of cows, though. 

Colorado mountains in the bright morning light. 

Wouldn't you take your dog here to be groomed? I know I would! 

I had a pretty good show in Albuquerque. The best part was meeting Juanita and Bill Williams, who had the booth across the aisle from me. We became fast friends, and I feel lucky to have met them.

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Dog of the Day

This stuffed dog was near a booth at the Rio Grande show in Albuquerque, and it looked so real, it startled me nearly every time I saw it. 

A Journey into Joshua Tree

Red Rocks, Joshua Tree 

Oil on canvas, 10x10

After seeing the Pacific, I headed for Twentynine Palms, Calif., and the Joshua Tree National Park. 

I usually avoid places that are already protected, but one of my friends and sponsors asked me to paint Joshua trees, and so I went. It It was a marvelous, enriching, soul-filling experience. I loved it. 

Joshua Tree National Park, all 1,234 acres of it, has been protected since 1936. It's been a national park since 1994. It is filled with Joshua trees, and with amazing and extremely bizarre rocks. In places, it was like being on the moon, or underwater, or in someone else's dream. 

Joshua trees, according to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, grow pretty much only in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada - the Mojave Desert. The trees like it best when they're at an elevation between 1,300 feet and 5,900 feet. Joshua Tree National Park is one of the trees' most favored environments. There's also a Joshua tree forest in the Mojave National Preserve.

 

The trees were named by Mormon settlers crossing the Mojave in the mid-19th century. The shape of the tree reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer. 

 

And they do look like people, in a way. They have a single tall trunk, and their branches are gnarled, with no little twiggy branches, just the main ones, twisted and turned, graceful and grotesque at the same time. They do look as though they are imploring, praying, raising their arms to the heavens.

 

Maybe it's because of the name, or the people-like trees, or the strange and amazing rocks, or the gorgeous, breathtaking, open landscape, or maybe it just is the aura of the place, but it seemed like a spot in which God was very close. It felt like a place of the spirit, a place of the soul. 

I spent two days and a night there, painting and camping in the van. I wanted to hear the quiet and see the stars, and watch the sun come up, all of which I did, shivering through some of it. 

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I'd always imagined Twentynine Palms to be an exotic and graceful place. Haven't you? Doesn't it sound like an oasis, a place of light and elegance? 

It is anything but. It's a dusty, sort of scruffy place, rough around the edges, not very friendly. Someone was shot and killed there on the night I spent in the park. 

There are some fun murals there, though, on the sides of buildings and stores. 

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On the way to Joshua Tree, I passed through a gigantic windfarm. It went on like this, on both sides of the highway, and then continued on the road onto which I exited. It was pretty amazing. And some of the windmills were turning in the light breeze, but most weren't. 

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There's more to Joshua Tree National Park than trees. There are also fascinating rocks and rock formations. Some are made of thousands if not millions of small (probably not so small, really) sharp-looking rocks. Others are piles of oddly smooth and rounded rocks. I've not seen anything like either formation. Between the strange trees and odd rocks, it felt a little like being on another planet, or undersea, or in some other time. 

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I took these three pictures during the same sunset! 
It just got better and better and better. 

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The moon set, and the dawn was just beginning when I took the photo below. 

Touching the Pacific

Pacific Coast, 6x12

I touched the Pacific Ocean on Monday! Walked across a sun-warmed beach and right into the Pacific, which was surprisingly cool, given the heat of the day. 

 

People were sunbathing, and swimming, and surfing. Later, in Carlsbad, where I made the 6x12 painting above, I saw a group of people exercising on the beach. 

 

I also saw surfers, on their boards, surfing some waves, and sitting there, bobbing, waiting. I saw surf buggies, too, real VW microbuses, and vehicles clearly home-altered to serve as campers and surfboard carriers. It was all just so very cool - just like what you see on TV. 

 

I drove through one town, Leucadia, that looked like a hippie-surf town, and seemed like it would be an excellent place to live. A little rough at the edges, a little welcoming. Otherwise, I saw beautiful and highly designed homes and shops, lots of stucco and tile roofs, impeccably kept tiny yards, built right up to the ocean. There's public access to the beaches through small alleys, but once you are in a town or city, you only get glimpses of the Pacific. 

And guess what? It looks a lot like the Atlantic! 

My little painting in the big California landscape

One of the most amazing sights I saw was this string of metal horses jumping across California 79. They're made by a guy named Ricardo Breceda who, according to a TV story, calls himself The Accidental Artist! You can click here to get to his website. He makes just absolutely amazing sculptures. The horse sculpture was breathtaking, and well worth the very scary drive up and over the mountains. 

Here's another sculpture, just past the first one. I know it's hard to see at this size, but if you click on it, you can see it larger. Pretty amazing! 

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Wouldn't you bring your car to this place? I would. The dirt lawn was swept impeccably, the bumpers or whatever they are were laid out in an exacting order - it was pretty amazing. 

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Huh? Cactus Exit Ahead? By now, I've puzzled over this for days, and 

still don't understand what it means. 

This squirrel kept eating its nuts or whatever it was eating, despite joggers, walkers and dogs. 

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Look at these two photos. It's January, people! And look at the flowers! 

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 In California, I saw real surfers - and real surf buggies. VW microvans. WOW.

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Dog of the Day

It's Bentley, out for a walk with his human, near the Pacific Ocean in Carlsbad. He was loving it! 

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And here's Scruffy! I didn't get the dog's name... (joke)

A Big Fat Zerio in Indio

San Jacinto Mountains

Oil on canvas, 10x10

Argh. I had such high hopes for the show in Indio, California. And the reality dashed them all. Not one painting sold. Not. One. 

It was the first show of the season! I have wonderful new work! It was in California!  

But the fact was that people weren't buying. Not just not buying my stuff, but not buying, pretty much in general. So I will do my best to not take it personally, and I will get on out and paint, which is my main purpose in being here, anyways. 

I did make some new artist friends, and that was great. Here's Judy, who had one of the booths across from me. She makes leather bags, wallets, backpacks, etc., and they are just gorgeous. When she's on the road, she sleeps in her utility trailer! She has a sewing machine in there, too. She'll be at the show in Tubac, along with Charlene, who was beside Judy and directly across from me. 

Above are some of the glass pieces Charlene made

I did have a weekend of sunny and warm - even hot - weather, and that was also great. I met some nice people who responded well to my art - they just didn't buy it. 

And I made this painting, which I love. Indio is at the base of a couple of mountain ranges, including this one, the San Jacinto. The mountains are steep and big and tall, and beautiful. Today, I'm planning on driving through them, on my way to the Pacific, which I think I should see, as long as I'm out here. 

Here's the view of the mountains I painted during the show. 

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Mountains on the road from California to Arizona

I saw beautiful road art on the drive from Arizona to California. I think these were near Phoenix

A sign in the lobby of the scruffy hotel where I'm staying...

LaQuinta is the next town up, and it's very pretty

The sky Friday night, just outside the show grounds. 

In the East, I'm one of the artists with big work. Out here, I'm not - by a long shot! 

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Dog of the Day

Dogs were not allowed in the show, but I found this one just outside of the parking lot. She spent the day in air-conditioned happiness in the artist's trailer, with the artist's husband...