
I painted this with an underpainting that I washed in with denatured alcohol. For some reason the drips were hard to paint over in places, but it seemed to work ok with the rain in the finished painting.

Anyone who has traveled with children in the car knows what it is like to spend a month in a car one day. Often, road trip time feels slow – sometimes I am in the right frame of mind to savor and enjoy time passing. This was one of those days. We drove from Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico, down to Ruidoso. The children slept, the rain fell, and we savored the drive – we watched the landscape unfold and open up around us, and we accepted the gift that was simply being present. It would take a month to paint the drive from this day, perhaps I will try.

We were traveling past Ghost ranch into Christ in the Desert Monastery a week ago, and we ran into Greg and Clement through hiking the Continental Divide Trail, a national scenic running 3,100 miles (5,000 km) between Mexico and Canada. We dream of through hiking a trail one day, and we love through hiking culture. Greg and Clement were delightful, if you would like to learn more about their hike read here: gregjhammond.blogspot.com

This is my beautiful mother painting in the painted desert outside of Georgia O’Keefe’s house. My mom taught me so much, and then let me teach her when she signed up for one of my workshops. I am so grateful to you, mom, for who you are, and all that you have done to encourage me. Starting at age 6, I always believed I was an artist because you made me think it was true. You are still doing that today. Thank you. I love you. Happy birthday!