CLIFF’S GAS DIESEL, Holly, Colorado; U.S. Highway 50

CLIFF'S GAS DIESEL, Holly, Colorado; U.S. Highway 50
acrylic
8 3/8 x 26 x 4 inches

Holly, Colorado was the last town before crossing over into Kansas on east bound U.S. Highway 50.  The plan was to a camp north of Stockton, Kansas so I could drive with sunrise back into Colorado.  Exhausted, I stopped at a closed filling station to examine a map.  Turning around, I searched for a road I failed to spot.  At that hour, the highway hosted only intermittent trucks.  In an area of fog I saw the turn off.  The methane fog filled with dust driving in a land of feedlots.  With each and every turn I wondered if I was getting any closer.  The road came to a tee.  On the left, there was a hollow of trees.  A lane straight ahead led to a house and other structures that hovered around a small porch light.  I turned right.  Headlights highlighted insect collisions when a sense of destiny began to settle in.  Continued travel on gravel only led deeper into starlit fields with a moon that would soon slip behind the horizon. 

It was nice to be on the highway heading back to a rest area I past just before leaving Colorado.  Although the plan was to camp, sleeping in the car was not impossible.  By folding the backseats forward, the trunk could accommodate 8 foot lengths of molding, it seemed like a sleeping bag could also fit into that space.  With part of the bag encased in the hollow of the trunk, getting in was a bit tricky.  Climbing through one of the back doors, I slid into the sleeping bag.  With my feet in the trunk, I embraced starlight from the calm of my pillow.  Although more comfortable, the car provided a private viewing of the nighttime sky that a tent denies.  It was nice to no longer be moving.  I settled in listening to the sound of crickets and other travelers pulling in.  With a sweep of idle headlights, car doors opened and closed.  Restrained voices trailed off; time acquired the weight of late arrival.
 

CLIFF'S GAS DIESEL, Holly, Colorado; U.S. Highway 50 (Left Side Detail)

I arrived by morning light.  The main street was off the highway as many main streets are out on the open plains.  Back on the highway, CLIFF’S GAS DIESEL was surrounded by piles of tires.  It was hard to tell exactly what Cliff did.  Outdated pumps stood in front of a rundown building, yet his business seemed to carry on.  I liked the station’s architecture.  It reminded me of a time when I enjoyed the highway as a child.  To say I like something implies a preference for the subjects I select.
While that may be true, it doesn’t happen in the ways you might expect.  I like everything.  Every place has moments, and one of those moments was a moment when I happened to be somewhere.  That may sound egocentric, but the only moment I know is the one I’m living in.  I realize dawn has come to Holly many times before, and that morning is an ordinary affair, but it is that common occurrence that seems to be so rare.  Instead of trying to create or capture the spectacular, I am thoroughly invested in minor events.  And since life is always happening, it doesn’t matter whether I am standing by a pile of tires or overlooking a vale of the Great Basin.  The same light that revels in sedimentary uplift sparkles in bits of broken glass and the asphalt patina flash that skips past fast food carcass discards along an open highway.  Feel the exhilaration in a swirl of rough and dusty leaves kicking up ruts and sailing across puddles permanently plaguing the bend of an alleyway. 

CLIFF'S GAS DIESEL, Holly, Colorado; U.S. Highway 50 (Right Side Detail)

With the filling station withstanding the ravages of time, I thought it might be nice to capture the historic nature of the place.  Of course, that could easily be achieved by using color.  Although color generally belongs to the realm of painting, I thought I would paint the station in shades associated with photography.  And although we see in color, thoughts of yesterday can be layered in shades of gray.  That is not to say that memory is colorless.  It is just that the paper trail of the past includes books, newspapers and magazines printed in black and white.  Photography dated parents and grandparents while still young in pallid shades of gray.  In that mix fell sepia prints.  Painting in shades of photography plays into a placement of frames on a desk, mantle or shelf.  Though not portraiture, landscapes have a capacity to spark hidden bits of consciousness.  Simple sights or sounds may remind us of other times and places.  Nostalgia is a riddle of the familiar.  The frame is reminiscent of snapshots, the evidence of a planned vacation, except no happy couple stands in front of an exquisite destination.  It is the domain of place, any place that is so compelling.  Another day arises on a highway in the town of Holly, Colorado.  As dilapidated as the filling station seems to be, CLIFF’S GAS DIESEL is still in business.  I could hear work  going on in the garage as I got into the car ready to hit the highway.

The Paintings of William Vaughn Howard Made it Easy for Me to Remain a Painter

William Vaughn Howard
Title Unknown
acrylic and charcoal
27 1/2 x 22

This is a painting by my college professor William Vaughn Howard.  When I entered his classroom, I was finished with painting.  I remained an art student because I didn’t know what else to do.  Although, I had found a place in drawing, an activity seldom practiced as a child because I painted.  In my view there was no need for drawing; painting was the statement I wanted to make, and since I worked from photographs there was no need for planning.  There was no advantage to a sketch, painting was drawing with a brush.  For some odd reason, the next drawing class never fit into my schedule and I was forced to take painting.  If I had had my way, I would have focused on drawing and printmaking.

The reason for being disillusioned was a simple one.  Painting in practice separated observation from believing that sight was decisive.  The theology of paint stated that the visual experience of day to day living could not engage without making changes to the nature of place.  This approach prefers staged arrangements over happenstance.  It is hard to image the staged as a comprehensive encounter when happenstance colors every situation.  A tea kettle whistles burner aglow.  A phone rings into the sound of hello.  A child screams out an enormous so are you!  A blue hued television seeps through panes of glass to catch a flash of passing light.  Rivulets rain weight into a sagging black hammock.  A puddle of a parking lot is a long shot from the warmer quarters of a dry café, the betrayal of a thoroughly wasted day started by the startle of an alarm clock set for another occasion.  The menu reads like faded paper, a half-life of gazing print, the compensating squint of a man that cannot stand reading glasses.  How can the staged ever manage to capture the meager sights of life, the true test of living?

Because art claimed to be more compelling than life, I gravitated to drawing.  Drawing wasn’t as lifelike anyway.  We don’t see a world of black and white.  Without color, drawing was all about abstraction.  There wasn’t the same kind of tension.  The decision had already been made for me; I wouldn’t have to worry about making what I saw fit the demands of art, an idea I truly detested.    

When I saw my professor’s abstractions, I thought I saw a poetry of place.  Although nothing could be directly linked, I thought I saw landscapes veiled within paint.  I found another place to be and began to paint again.

It is hard to know what to say about a painting.  Paint here represents paint.  Content is a collection of movements, changes made many times to a rime of indecision until not knowing becomes a knowing that says this is it.  Broken into many facets, this is a beautiful looking glass of abstraction.

 

Ten October Leaflets and a Routine of Understanding: the BLM, Juniper, Grasslands, Fire Suppression, the Artifice of Art, the Plausibility of Scale, Paper Frames, and an Ever Present Center

Ten October Leaflets
paper, pastel, acrylic, fabric, glass and wood
5 3/4 x 44 1 7/8 inches

In the habit of collecting autumn leaves, one day I selected the smallest specimens I could find.  Seeing comes from being in front of things over and over again.  In the routine the unexpected may reveal itself.  An oak leaf calls to mind shape and size, but that’s a narrow spectrum when compared with a grove full of oak leaves.  Much of my knowledge comes from sights so familiar that they finally grab my attention.  That may be why we can easily be fooled.  It takes some kind of recognition to realize that the parameters of an argument may not support its position.

My Brother Steve Standing by a 20 Year Old Juniper

This country has a lot of juniper.  An argument states that much of the West was more open than it currently is; juniper invaded grassy lands due to fire suppression.  It is unlikely that anywhere there are now vast stands of juniper, that 50 to 100 years ago those areas were mostly open.  I live where I can watch them grow, and know the timeline needed to go from seedling to tree simply doesn’t fit the scenario.  A 20 year old tree in a field that is regularly watered is not much bigger than a man.  Junipers grow slowly and are among the last trees to reseed after fire.  A fire on a nearby ridge 17 years ago is still waiting for junipers to show while everything else has taken off.  The idea that juniper once burned with a regularity that mirrors that of other kinds of forests isn’t supported by the trees.  Large trees mean there hasn’t been any fire in quite a while.  Past grasslands described on Bureau of Land Management signs seem to be a ranching theme without a bias for science.   

Ten October Leaflets (left end detail)

The leaves selected are not the leaves I framed.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t frame any leaves at all.  Drawn to scale, the leaflets stage a way to plausibility.  In landscape painting, that situation never arises.  No matter how accurately a ridgeline is rendered, it is never mistaken for the real thing because of scale.  Although art is always a lie, it is not very good at deception.  Basic truth gives it away.  We enjoy the con, failing to realize that brushstrokes are nothing but marks and abstraction is considered another thing altogether.  Many need to see things in things never realizing that everything is essentially abstract.  The leaves are not leaves.  Paper framed abstractions stand in for fallen leaves.  Here the plausibility of scale buys paper a shelf life of deception.

Ten October Leaflets (center detail)

I liked the word leaflet; it applies to the tiny side of leaves and pages of information.  The leaflets can also be thought of as propaganda for the month of October.  Not only are the leaves misleading, the frames are also paper.  The shelf is covered in handmade book coverings identifying the individual leaves by number.  Within the simplicity of a specimen box, the centered designation of a leaf is the only arrangement that makes any sense.  Framing compositionally makes it seem like we can achieve a vision that is not centered.  However, there is no way of denying the center; every shift in sight is a new center.  We only perceive asymmetry because what we see is based on conditioning.  The only way to center or not center a road or the edge of a building is by not seeing the rest of the scenery.  Vision does not care where it is positioned; it always sees what is in front of it.  Visual significance is just a manifestation of a hierarchy of interests that have nothing to do with sight.

Ten October Leaflets (right end detail)

Contemplation within the Small Space of a Closet Library: Cardboard Flooring, Sculpture, Ivory Soap, Chinese Painting, Nature and Discipline, William Vaughn Howard, and the Gravitational Pull of a Drop Cloth

Closet Library with Window, Paintings, Sculpture and Shelves

The closet library is a 42 x 96 inch space behind a studio wall.  It is so small that walls lean in to grace the camera lens.  Because the closet had a window, I saw it as a space for contemplation.  

Cardboard Flooring, Table, Handmade Boxes, Chair, Paintings and Shelves

The lack of space made it difficult to move while remodeling.  Some sheetrock was removed; bookshelves were hung from inside the studs to save space.  Carpet was replaced with a corridor of cardboard.  The wall to wall cardboard strips are quite firm.  Though not efficient, the experimental floor was worth the undertaking.  Although art is often defined as nonfunctional, it is hard to image anything more useful.  There is no better way to change or rearrange the thought process.



Soapstone
soap, paper, acrylic, pastel, fabric, plexi-glass, cedar and black primer
28 1/4 x 17 5/8 x 14 1/2 inches

A few years ago I decided to carve rock.  Unlike some sculptors, I didn’t want to chip away at something that beautiful.  I seldom start from a place easily defaced.  There is little risk to squeezing paint out onto a palette.  Of course with quarried stone, much of the damage is already done.  But even so, crystal, layer and grain retain a beauty that arranged dabs of paint on a plate of glass just don’t have.  I settled on soap.  I remembered trying to shape it in grade school.  The great thing about it was it wouldn’t require the purchase of new tools to whittle away at a craft I wasn’t committed to.  I liked the idea of working in reverse.  While some make something out of stone, my aspiration was just to mimic rock.  Though the process may sound like a perverse curse hurled upon the faithful, I purchased a year’s supply of soap and stuck a stack of bars together.  The carved Ivory Soap was gradually wrapped in bits of torn print making paper and painted with acrylic, pastel and fabric.  Unsealed, it was encased to protect it from dust and handling.

Chinese Painting, Stir Stick, Handmade Boxes, Burl, Table and Chair

A door-less doorway frames a Chinese painting.  On a table stands a stir stick, a history of stain and paint sustain beauty without implication.  The Chinese painting and the stir stick correlate in an unusual way.  One was intentional; the other acquired natural saturation free from the slight of design.  We seldom pay attention to the unaltered, ignoring astounding beauty all around.  Instead we’re transfixed by tricks we control.  A composition is never free to let things be.      

I’ve enjoyed the freeness of the Chinese painting for many years.  Freeness may seem out of place when you consider that the painting is an exercise filled with all the rigor exercise brings, but freedom is the vigor of discipline.  By the time the bamboo was painted, it had already been painted so many times that the artist was free to feel bamboo in the breeze without thinking.  Through discipline, the painting becomes natural in the way nature shapes drainage.  Repetitive weather conditions come and go.  Canyons unfold.  The stir stick was stained, an implement of history designed to mix consistency back into a can of paint.  It was colored by time, a mind greater than any design ruled supposition.  Order is often too simplistic to consider an array of associations without a disposition for restriction.  Why should order mean the elimination of information?  Rules decide somewhat arbitrarily.  Couldn’t arbitrary justifications also be a form of chaos? 

At the start of a semester, my professor William Vaughn Howard hung a drop cloth on the wall.  When asked why by a friend, he said something like this: I want my students to have something to shoot for.  In those drops and splatters reality is devoid of self-consciousness.  Gravity speaks without flinching to see if it complies with or denies rules of design.  The paint like lichen takes hold where it will take hold.  Time is a designer without question.  Instead of trying to find ways to emphasize setting, it may be better to consider the beauty of always arriving.  Then hamburger stands are as grand as kitchen tables.



Table, Handemade Boxes, Stir Stick, Burl and Drawing

Lucas B&B Restaurant and Other Dallas Sites; Charcoal, Paint, Claude Monet, Two-Dimensional Space and Self-Taught Referencing

Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas, Texas
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 1/2 x 15 x 1 5/16 inches including integral frame

Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas, Texas began as an attempt to recapture a way of working in the 80’s where I applied powdered charcoal to paper with a sponge.  Much of drawing was lifting and cutting into the charcoal with and eraser.  The Volkswagen Bus is a good example of that method.   I should have known better.  Competing with my past is far worse than having someone peer over my shoulder; that intrusion is never permanent, but I never can get away from myself.  Because memory has a tender spot for the affirmative, time colors the past with the charcoals that survive.  The failures were pitched; and those that remain have a power that fills me with trepidation.  Although I know many drawings failed, when I glance at the past framed behind glass all I see is continuum, success upon success, an arresting array of fear and frustration.



Volkswagen Bus
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Fear seems to accompany every new endeavor.  When I can, I prefer to work first thing in the morning.  That way I have little time to think about what I have to do.  I hate starting anything new, groundwork can remain groundwork indefinitely and that hardly feels inspiring.  Art only arrives after compiling a certain amount of time in marks that defy description of sky or pavement.  I often use paint as a word for process.  I feel the divide between it and drawing is an artificial one; after all, changing materials doesn’t turn sculpture into something else.  I don’t know why we speak of two kinds of illusions; both occupy two-dimensional space and deal with the limitations in the same way.



Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas Texas was not a failure; I wasn’t going to throw it away.  It was just not what I intended it to be.  The charcoal was sharper than I desired due to too much tooth, although the rag board felt fairly smooth, the charcoal didn’t flow easily.  I was also filled with apprehension.  Art and writing always rely on adjustments.  While firm and determined to be true to content, there are many avenues by which to grasp the distillation of place.  Many of my paintings demonstrate this idea.  Canvas or panel, divergent brushstrokes describe reality through painting.  As much as I admire Claude Monet and French Impressionism, it puzzles me why the same kinds of strokes are used to describe brush and sky.  The diorama was rooted in painting before I knew anything of Impressionism.  My paintings as a child deciphered a world through brushstrokes that divided earth from sky.  I would have never thought to use similar strokes throughout a painting.  In that sense I guess I never was a painter.  I don’t know how to construct the surface of a rock with a couple of broad brush strokes. 



Grandy's on New Year's Day
mixed media diorama
7 5/16 x 10 1/16 x 1 7/8 inches including integral frame

Woodall Rodgers Freeway and Olive Street, Dallas, Texas (Detail, Right Center Panel)
acrylic
18 x 56 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches including integral frame

Having used color on charcoal before, I introduced color.  Everything has its origins in something else.  Even self-taught artists are not without references.  Dividing artists into groups overemphasizes the significance of college; learning is internal, making everyone self-taught.



As I slowly added the color of water soluble crayon, the drawing acquired a presence I really liked.  I am not sure what others mean when they use the word presence, but for me it means the respiration of atmospheric light.  Presence as a sound spells diffusion; two-dimensional constraints cannot contain the life of painting.  Pleased with the results, Blackburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas followed.  When I got to Tillery Avenue Psychic, Dallas, Texas; I flipped things around by starting with acrylic and covering everything over with charcoal and the residue of burnt matchsticks.  That may sound strange, but no matter how diligently a surface is covered up, the previous layers of paint always remain influential.  That is why I treat painting as watercolor.  The arrangements are mapped out ahead of time.  Oil and acrylic are more like watercolor than people realize.  Once the light of white is covered up, it can never entirely be retrieved.  That means that the acrylic would shine through even when covered in charcoal.  A mystery of charcoal is why carbon traces on paper so easily reveal a feeling of an atmospheric clarity often missing within the layering of paint.

Blackburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 5/8 x 28 7/8 x 1 3/8 inches including integral frame

Tillery Avenue Psychic, Dallas, Texas
acrylic, charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 9/16 x 15 9/16 x 1 1/2 inches including integral frame

Drawing US Highway 50 Historical Site Hazen, Nevada: A Southern Pacific Railroad House, Lynching, Fire, a For Sale Sign, and the Unexpected Chiming in of Dungarees



Far Right Side Detail: Hazen, Nevada; US Highway 50 ( The Loneliest Road in America)

Left Side Detail



Right Side Detail

HAZEN WAS NAMED FOR WILLIAM BABCOCK HAZEN, WHO SERVED UNDER GENERAL SHERMAN IN HIS “MARCH TO THE SEA.” THE TOWN, ESTABLISHED IN 1903 TO HOUSE LABORERS WORKING ON THE NEWLANDS IRRIGATION PROJECT SOUTH OF HERE, INCLUDED HOTELS, SALOONS, BROTHELS, CHURCHES, AND SCHOOLS.

IN 1905 THE FIRST TRAIN CAME THROUGH ON THE NEW ROUTING TO TONOPAH. IN 1906 THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD BUILT A LARGE ROUNDHOUSE HERE AS WELL AS A FINE DEPOT.

IN 1908 HAZEN WAS NEARLY DESTROYED BY FIRE.



AS A TOUGH TOWN, IT HAD NO PEER IN THE STATE. NEVADA’S LAST LYNCHING OCCURRED IN HAZEN WHEN “RED” WOOD WAS TAKEN FROM THE WOODEN JAIL AND HANGED ON FEBRUARY 28, 1905.

I saw no reason to rewrite this statement.  What I know, you just read, and it comes from Historical Marker No. 178 and the Nevada State Park System.  Anything added is from memories of a small town, a railroad crossing, and a journey into darkness.

Hazen was the first town after the interstate.  When we left, the sun was low.  The land flattened out in advancing shadows, a thunderous freight train beside the highway churned past the last bit of daylight.  In the evening mist, every little insect seemed to hit the windshield, sweet smelling alfalfa whistled through open vents and windows.  Cool twilight unfurled a canopy of stars, and although others rode inside the car, darkness was my only companion.

I always like the H for Hazen on Black Butte.  Although the drawing is a depiction of heat, travel from Reno across the state often began late, Friday after work was the first chance to get away.  Hazen on a slight rise divides alkali from alkali.  Nevada is an array of drainage basins that never link up to the ocean.  Rivers like the Carson, Humboldt, Walker and Truckee die in isolation.  By the time trails were blazed for what became current day U.S. Highway 50, The Loneliest Road in America, it was known that none of the rivers of the Great Basin, lead the way to the San Francisco Bay.  Gravity frequently failed to take creeks and streams even as far as the next valley.  The landscape is a place of names dedicated to ancient lakes like Bonneville and Lahontan.  Springtime sometimes tries to fill the remains of vanquished lakes, now an ethereal ice age of sage assaulted by hail and rain, and the rage of thunder and lightening.  Here along much of this paved and rolling highway, the Pony Express made its way to the next station.

It had been years since I worked in charcoal.  Shopping for a sponge to cut up and dip in a new jar of powdered charcoal was fun.  Sitting at a table with familiar materials at hand was bit like slipping into a pair of old dungarees.  Although I never use the word, I thought I heard dungarees in the sound of musical phrasing and jotted it down.  It was like striking a match and I struck many of those while making this drawing, only I don’t know what to do with the words lyrically.  Perhaps the previous sentences should be scrubbed, edited, erased, but I think I will leave them in anyway.  The burnt end of a matchstick leaves a nice trail, a warm residue when pressed to paper.  Drawing can be thought of as a collection of pressure marks.  Defining a trailer house, gravel and weeds as a matter of record is just hand adjustments made with charcoal and an eraser.  Although I love listening to lyrics, I don’t know how to compose words into song.  Charcoal more fluid than paint is well acquainted with the atmospheric light that pigment often denies by relying too heavily on texture, the pasty state of style.  By the way, the charcoal and carbon rich matchstick scratching was enhanced a bit with color from water soluble crayons and a damp brush.

                                   

I stopped and read a sign

About a lynching in 1905

Instead of crying,

People seem to sing

Poor Red Wood,

Imagine the irony

Taller than any tree

Strung up and hung

From the lowly bough

Of a drought ravaged elm.



Standing in the sun,

I imagine dusty men

In old dungarees

Sipping chicken brothel soup

No longer offended

After crashing the wooden jail

Haling a man free

From justice and a judge

To twist in the middle of a crowd,

A lynchpin righteous with delight



I take history in with a smile

And leave with a breeze.

Poor Red Wood

Imagine the irony

Taller than any tree

Strung up and hung

From the lowly bough

Of a drought ravaged elm.









Hazen, Nevada; US Highway 50 (The Loneliest Road in America)
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 1/4 x 52 1/16 x 1 5/16 inches including integral frame

Dallas, Texas on Arrival: Painting, Drawing, Photography, Monet and French Impressionism



Downtown Construction
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Although made in the 1983 when I was just out of college, I still admire these drawings.  Having just finished the Master Workshop at Southampton College, Southampton, New York, I moved from Reno, Nevada to Dallas, Texas.  I was an abstract painter out of money and paint.  Believing I should work even if I had nothing to work with, I made drawings on the back of mailers that showed me sitting in front of one of my large paintings.  The charcoal images came from snapshots my younger brother Steve had taken.  I had no plans of leaving abstraction.  I was just killing time that otherwise would have been wasted waiting to windup in a better place financially.

Parked Car
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

The charcoals demonstrate the kind of imagery I would soon pursue.  Without even knowing it, the reality of my surroundings began to settle in.  I was no longer in or around the mountains of the West that characterized the paintings I made as a child.  I was now around buildings and traffic, which by the way was a pretty good fit.  Much of what we know of the city has been dressed in black and white.  The drawings have a bit of a patina for me; I mean they have a stature that makes it difficult for me to ever tackle drawing in the same way.  Some of that comes from the gloss of photography.  The black and white nature of the print signifies the past; our knowledge of urban life was recorded by photography that also includes TV, movies and newspapers.  Information primarily came in shades of gray.  This is just a thought, but perhaps Impressionism and the movements that followed were reacting to a world increasingly seen through technologies that captured life in black and white.

Volkswagen Bus
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

The drawings were made with stick and powered charcoal and an eraser.  The process was all about simplification.  This can be seen particularly well in the drawing of a Volkswagen bus.  Nearly the entire street scene takes place in shadow.  Definition is defined by slight shifts awash in the gray tailings of a charcoal filled sponge.  A little shove with a charcoal stick here and an eraser rub over there assail abstraction in representational rendering.  The foreground is bound by a single mark separating street and curb from blind whiteness.  Even to this day, I do not know how I made this drawing.  Although, I know the process, I am afraid I would fail if I tried it again.  This is due to its simplicity.  Whereas the complexity of painting provides endless opportunities to get it right.  Painting a manifestation of patience is not reliant on luck.

Cars
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Ever since the onsite spontaneity of French Impressionism there has been high praise for the painterly.  Just out of college, I was well aware of that position and never really questioned it.  A great attribute of charcoal is its ability to move.  There is nothing quite like it in the realm of paint.  Watercolor may come to mind, but there’s always a danger of harsh and unwanted waterlines.  Providing that the compressed charcoal is left for last, the application of charcoal remains fluid through the process of editing.  Here charcoal easily becomes a car and the refraction of light in tight spaces that jam downtown.  It is difficult to sweep layers of paint across canvas and maintain the atmospheric light Monet caked onto countryside.  Few do it in fact.  Paint became celebrity, gone were the days when content drove painters outside to spontaneously grasp at the sight of changing light.  These days about all that remains is paint, the commodity of meaning, few see that thickness can be a bit thick.  Vigorous painterly paint may not be that bold.  Meeting preconceived notions of what greatness entails avails painters a pass.  Real scrutiny only goes to those doing the unexpected.  We seldom evaluate the known stances and practices that define the climate of our times.  

Hotel
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Landscape Painting: Clear Lake, Utah; A Union Pacific Freight Train; and a US Highway 50 Crossroad

Freight Train, Millard County, Utah
oil on canvas
8 5/16 x 12 3/4 inches

A Union Pacific freight train rolls through Clear Lake.  These days it is just a gravel road crossing a highway.  Brittle hedges define rectangular shaped spaces of past habitation.  The structures are gone; tin cans, broken glass, concrete shale and nails are the visual remains of decay.  A local museum may display a book or two on the place, but no historical marker describes the lives of the vanished inhabitants.

The road could be a short cut out to US Highway 50 if not for dusty vibrations and scrapes with sage on turns and straight-aways in grey ruts of mud.  I know from experience.  Acceleration and luck are the only things that kept me from being stuck out in a sea of sage a long way away from any house or highway.

Clear Lake, Utah: Landscape Painting by Lloyd Brown Captures Desert Wetlands



Details: Clear Lake, Millard County, Utah (The Loneliest Road in America)
oil on canvas
7 x 57 1/8 inches





The images for this painting came from a drive my brother Steve and his family and I took to Clear Lake.  Leaving town we hit a squall.  The early summer afternoons were filled with frequent thunderstorms.  It was difficult to tell if the shafts were veils of rain or curtains of dust.  This was new.  Although it was desert to the west for as far as the eye could see, dust squalls were limited to gusty southerly breezes that abruptly switched course to a sandblasting kind of cold just ahead of snow.  Not all snowstorms precipitated dust, but some swept in with a choking grey just ahead of whiteout.

            The current dust comes from fire or a series of fires that burned more than 360,000 acres of trees, shrubbery and grasslands to the southwest of town the summer of 2007.  We were away at a family reunion in northern Utah.  The news was short on information; we couldn’t tell where the fire was burning.  The freeway was closed; we knew that much, but because so many TV reporters are just pretty faces, they didn’t really know where they were.  The largest fire in Utah’s history was but an abstract distraction between commercial breaks.  When we got home, smoke exposed flames burned away on the horizon for several nights.  When the blaze was close to comatose, the roads we thought we knew turned to delicate ash.  Firefighting teams and machinery beat chalky ruts to alkali power.  As we drove through dusty brush, an unspoken dread of getting stuck was mentioned.  A driver never cares to hear those tones of concern turn to scolding satisfaction when a dreaded event happens.  The road improved.  Blackness came into view and silenced what could have been a scorn of superiority.    



            The fire explains the vast shafts of dust and veiled rain.  It is hard to tell which will prevail until the first droplets hit the skin so cold, you recoil.  It’s not like that everywhere.  Rain is not always met with darting alarm.  Pelts are only pelts because the cold makes it so.  Babies are not baptized in ice water for a reason.  I didn’t know that until I left the Basin and Range region of the United States.  A downpour can be like standing in a shower.  Although ducking for cover is common practice, in many places it is just about staying dry.

 





            As we walked around the lake, clouds were very much a part of the scenery.  Atmospheric conditions of filtered light and rain, and the small scale of the painting obscure the mountainous terrain of the horizons.   It could be almost anywhere.  Water is the thing we see and I am reminded of being out in a boat around Port Aransas.  The difference is mainly scale.  Shallows and reeds, sky high clouds cast in sedimentary decay, mercury colored mud languidly underscores the distillation of a breeze, an unbroken transparency dancing in ripple and wave across the water.  With a little imagination, the scene could be anywhere along the Texas coastline.  The difference is one of confinement.  Mountains surround the lake in a sea of sage.