I love when my days are bracketed with the sun rise and set.
Virga Roja
In meteorology, virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates or sublimes before reaching the ground. If you are lucky this happens at sunset and the setting sun reflects off the virga making red rain. Truly, I think I may be in the most beautiful place in the world.
Chama In Violet and Yellow
Complimentary colors do it for me every time.
Sunrise 5:59am
Dear friends left camp just after 5am, it was a treasure to spend several weeks with them on the ranch. I had fun watching the colors unfold as I contemplated the treasure of friendship. I declared the sunset peak just before 6am.
Orphan Mesa
To the Desert
By Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.
8:35 Sunset
Last week I had a wonderful sunset walk with my daughters, and we watched in wonder and awe as the colors changed all around and up above us. Then the apricots, and pinks, and reds grayed, and finally turned from blue to dark. Our spell was broken. Miriam, my 6 year old broke the silence. She said “if I were the sun, I would do this every night.”
We are on the far side of the summer solstice now, and I am struck by how much the sunset has moved up from last week to this. Here are last night’s colors after the color works as they started to grey.
Pack’s Point 10:15am
It was cool this morning in the shade, I bet in the 60s. The light and shadows on Pack’s Point were fun to chase. I grabbed them right after 10.
Wall Walker
My son walked into this landscape I was painting plein air.
I took a portrait workshop from Judith Carducci once, and she told us that if we could capture the shape of the shadow on the face we would find a likeness. Moving targets are tricky to capture, but I tried Judith’s method with the highlights on Micah…the top of his hat, his neck, down one arm, and his other elbow, the back of both legs…and there he was. Neat trick.
Micah likes to balance his way on top of things and through life. It is fun to watch.
Painted Desert In Shades Of Orange
“I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.”
― Edward Abbey, Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
Changing Shape
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
The light was magnificent behind chimney rock, the sky a shocking blue. It only lasted a moment, so I caught it fast and loose in a little study. The clouds and light change quickly here, I am constantly trying to pause and notice before the moment slips away. A piece of the chimney fell off between the time I hiked the trail to the top last night and when I looked agin today. The changing made me think of HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW’s poem “Kéramos” written in 1878. The shape of Chimney Rock, and those 4 kids of mine…all things must change. Look quick before the moment slips away, indeed to-morrow be to-day.
paintandsimple 