The Loneliest Road in America: US Highway 50, Nevada and the Great Basin; Peavine Peak, a Painting from an Exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas

The next several posts come an exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas that I did in 2010.  The paintings where a survey of U.S Highway 50 crossing Nevada.  The following is written information from the invitation and the handmade book that went with the painting of Peavine Peak.

 

A Railroad Crossing Outside of Hazen, Nevada
oil on canvas
16 1/16 x 36 1/8 inches
2008

The Loneliest Road in America

 

Although it may not be America’s loneliest road, a portion of US Highway 50 has that designation for a reason.  On its way from Maryland to California, it crosses Nevada, the driest state in the union.

 

For personal reasons, I extend the theme to include some of Utah.  As a child, I traveled back and forth between parents on this highway.  The 500-mile drive from Fillmore, Utah to Reno, Nevada was devoid of farming for 410 miles.  The rivers that rise on either side of the Great Basin never find their way to the sea and wind up wasting away in large evaporation ponds like the Great Salt Lake.

 

The region informs the way I think about light, and although I was not aware of it, the long vistas taught me to see instability.  It is a feature of any horizon and key to a sense of depth in painting.  It is nice to return to mending miles of silence strung along by power lines and waves of sage known as The Loneliest Road in America.

 

 

 

Peavine Peak
oil on canvas
5 7/8 x 17 1/2 inches
2009

 

Peavine Peak

 

As remote as it looks, Reno is on the other side of the mountain.  This in fact, is not far from Horizon Hills, a subdivision just down the hillside.  We lived on Pawnee Court, a dead end street, in a maze of streets claiming tribal ancestry.  In a way, that may have been fitting.  The development looked like a reservation.  The houses had an air of being manufactured and the lots were mostly barren.

  

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture.  As neighborhoods go, this was nicer than most.  However, architecture in the state, if there is any, looks haphazard.  If you want more than gaming and houses of prostitution, stick with the sage.  Wind-rustling brush shapes the face of the horizon, and from our place, it was either high or low.

 

By suppertime, the wind was roaring and tin canned processions of tumbleweeds and milk cartons assaulted backyard gardens.  Although there were dogs in the neighborhood, there was no need for them. The wind had a canine sense of design.  Had there been any trees, thrashing branches would have whipped leaves into the sound of many waters.  No one had air conditioning, and the afternoon heat was chased away through open windows that later closed to keep out the night.  Then, in the chill of morning light, the wind was silent.

 

 



Handmade book for Peavine Peak
4 1/4 x 3 x 3/8 inches

 

U.S. Highway 50 at Robinson Summit: The Loneliest Road in America Climbs another Summit on a Path across Nevada

A Bend in US Highway 50 at Robinson Summit,
White Pine County, Nevada (The Loneliest Road in America)
oil on canvas
20 3/16 x 32 1/8 inches framed

A few years ago, I made some paintings based on a stretch of U.S Highway 50 known as the Loneliest Road in America.  This section crosses Nevada.  Although that designation and the making of Great Basin National Park have increased traffic, the road is still a highway of desert isolation.  Two summers ago, my brother’s family and I tried to camp at the national park.  All the sites were full.  We ended up spending the night below Sacramento Pass at a Bureau of Land Management camp.  After twilight, travel completely stopped.  Crickets occupied the night.  A starlit sky defined pinion, a thicket so deep detail had the absence of black water.  I was stunned.  The highway was a part of my childhood.  I thought I knew the lonely nature of the place.  But even at the height of the tourist season, night was completely still.  For each painting I made a small book.  The following comes from one of those written descriptions.

Summits sometimes fail to provide sweeping vistas.  While a highway may make the grade, and cross the divide, spectacular views may be winding miles away.  After climbing the embankment, it was obvious that there was no panoramic blue to examine.  However, it did give me an interesting view of the highway.

When I was young, I was so taken by mountain peaks, that I missed the matted fabric of forest floors.  Never rambunctious, I had little or no interest in sports.  However, if a mountain was around, I wanted to climb it.  I had an obsession to see as far as I could see.

I remember hiking in the foothills above Salt Lake City with a friend when I was eleven in the snow.  His feet grew cold; he stayed below, while I scrambled to the top.  I loved perspective’s swoop and dive into tiny woven streets reflecting sunlight below towering mountains.  Basking in the curvature of exhilaration, I thought my friend was a wimp.  I loved high places, but it was never for an adrenaline rush or exercise.  I had a passion for seeing seas of topography.

In many respects, that made me blind.  I was only interested in the spectacular, and it was years before I learned how to see.  I remember a trip back to Ontario where my family comes from, and being bored with states like Iowa.  No mountains towered over corn fields, and I disliked the whiteness of skies and the deep stinking heat of humidity.  I couldn’t comprehend how anyone could stand a land of fields and trees where puffy little clouds floated around in atmospheric anemia.

When I moved to Texas, I was always searching for higher horizons, and eventually began to see beauty in the turned up fields of the countryside.  Weekends found me on roads to places like Meridian and Clifton.  I never knew where I was going, but enjoyed driving.  However, because I always had to return, I was undeniably tired.  Going anywhere required miles of driving; exhilaration turned into weariness and defeat.  I began staying closer to home and looked for adventure in the city.  In a sense, this was not new; as a child, I could see topography in any empty field.  My thoughts turned to the content of walks.  I began to see the vagaries of life in heat crushing concrete.  Even weeds defined the high and mighty sky.  Being in step with the pedestrian really set me free.

Handmade book placed on the back of the painting
4 9/16 x 3 1/8 x 3/8 inches

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)