Art Journal

Clouds are fascinating to me and I like painting them. Living here with a lot of open sky around you can see many exciting sky vistas. This particular sky was out in Arizona as we were driving near Petrified Forest National Park and the sun was getting low in the late afternoon.

The painting started out as a vertical but I was unable to make that work right so I changed to a horizontal. The clouds were forming stripes in the sky and the ground was already starting to fall into shadow. This was a new size for me, a studio painting, and I fought with it the whole way to the end. With some paintings it is like wrestling a nonstop foe until you finally work it into submission. I'd rather have the ones that come easier, but that is a pretty rare occasion. Still, I like how this one finally came out.

Cloud Streets, 18 x 24.

This is a farm east of here in the country that I have wanted to paint for a while, and finally got a chance last week. Once again, still under social distance orders, I did this from the car. The alfalfa fields are already quite green and thriving, while the trees here still have no real leaves on them. It's been a late spring with our double hit of foot-deep snow just 3 days apart in April. That's over now for good (we hope) and spring is finally arriving.

The Yellow Farm, 9 x 12.