One Way Off Mckinney Avenue, Dallas, Texas

This painting can be seen at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas

One Way Off McKinney Avenue, Dallas, Texas
acrylic, ragboard, canvas, charcoal graphite and wood
52 9/16 x 17 3/8 x 2 1/2 inches

One Way Off McKinney Avenue, Dallas, Texas is abstraction in just about as many ways as can be imagine. It started with the middle piece and for a while it was nothing but that painting. The bottom piece was also completed the same evening; it just so happened that the paintings fit existing frames. Abstraction embraces a game of chance. It was a lucky break. The frames fit the new paintings.  Even though I did not know it, chance had already played a role in the structure of the painting.

 My focus remained on the center painting. Although I thought I was finished, I continued to make subtle changes. As I evaluated what I saw, my mind would say yes, then it would say no, and no always required further action. Abstraction is always at risk from the very beginning. A wash or simple gesture is almost always beautiful. Yet the question of whether it is enough is always lurking. Any advance could mean destruction. Ease no matter how exquisite, is not that satisfying. Painting was never meant to be routine and ease can be just another form of boredom.

This was the original orientation of the painting. The bottom part of
this pairing is where it all began. In the beginning it was simpler and developed over time. 

As I looked at the two paintings, I considered putting them together. Because I saw them as a vertical expression, there was no way to see them standing on one another. They needed to be physically connected. Doing that was risky because it would be hard to undo. I liked what I saw. The horizontal abstraction occupied the top spot. When I began to think of introducing a street scene into the mix, I decided to flip the whole thing around and the top became the bottom. That change in orientation meant that I needed to do more painting. The problem was resolved one night listening to the Beatles’ album Revolver.

When I flipped the painting around, I thought of adding imagery
to the top of the frame. Here we see some imagery of the wet street between the
two abstract paintings.

To make a place for what would be a new painting, I extended the frame. I had no way of knowing if a street scene on top of a couple abstractions was something that would work. I pressed ahead. As snowmelt began to coalesce, I imagined a section of the wet pavement and cobblestone painted on the top angle of the bottom frame. I liked the idea of imagery fanning out from underneath the middle frame and bumping up to the beaded lip of the frame below. I placed a blank piece of paper in that position to get a feel for what it would do to the overall structure. Again, I liked what I saw. Because the information on the angle of the frame was limited, it would remain abstract no matter how accurately it was rendered. I liked the idea of a vague reference and painted it that way.

Here the frame was extended to accommodated the new painting of McKinney Avenue

Part of my experience with abstraction has been collage, and this ended up being collage as I never imagined it. The entire process including the frame was based on being open and alert. When you paint that way, there is no telling what will happen. There has been a trend in the art world to limit the range of imagination. You were supposed to paint bottles, or cats, or abstractions that were light and airy, or abstractions that were stockpiles of paint. The other was to be ruled out in favor of a singular position that stood for commitment, sincerity and vision. I immediately responded to the work of Gerhard Richter because it blew all that nonsense away, demonstrating that it was okay to be involved in many things. Knowledge should not be shut out just to become a specialist. We look up to and admire those that can speak more than one language. If painting were language, a multilingual understanding of paint would be a celebrated thing. By bringing the abstractions and cityscape together, I demonstrate a grasp of some of those language skills and show that in many ways, they really are the same. If you can do one, you should be able to the other. The artists that gave us modernism could do many things. What happened? 

Full view of the finished painting.

 

 

 

US Highway 50, Utah, Nevada and the Border Inn

Border Inn Motel, Slots, Café
oil on canvas
16 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches

This painting can be seen at William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

The Border Inn lies on the Utah-Nevada between Delta and Ely, Nevada. It is a welcomed sight for those not noticing the sign that read NEXT SERVICES 83 MILES back in Hinckley, Utah. That is a long haul without any habitation. The course of the highway and the signs that remind you to watch for deer, cattle and falling rock lie in brush and stubble. Because of the beautiful nature of desolation, bullet holed trashcan pullovers pass by in silence.

If the border tied into traffic from Salt Lake City, it would be like Wendover and Mesquite crawling with Mormons on gentile retreats for the weekend. The alpine peaks of Great Basin National Park are not much of a draw. Before the park, nobody knew what was there. As it is, most of the time, you can have much of the park to yourself.

On many Nevada highway borders, there are places like the inn proudly displaying gambling signs. This is too small for anything more than a few slot machines. Still it is small town Nevada away from the industrialized gambling of Reno and Las Vegas. The West survives in these towns along the highway due to isolating wind, heat, cold and snow. Because of the lack of water, farming was never really an option. When the ore played out, many towns vanished in the sage. Part of what kept these hanging on was vacant highway. You’ll probably have to stop at two or three of these for a hamburger and gasoline. Nevada takes openness for granted. NEXT SERVICES 83 MIILES was a courtesy of Utah. Nevada goes on the assumption that you are not going to gamble on the accuracy of a fuel gauge as you leave Ely for Eureka or Lages Station.

Handmade booklet for painting
4 9/16 x 3 1/8 x 3/8 inches

A Railroad Crossing Outside of Hazen, Nevada

The following is from a handmade book for one of the paintings in The Loneliest Road in America exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2010.  In describing the Great Basin, my thoughts turned to wildfires.

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

Although it had been green across most of the state, many low-lying areas remain barren even in years of abundance.  All of us have seen or heard how deserts bloom after rain showers.  That happens here as well, but not as often as it does in Texas or New Mexico.  It is not only a matter of it being dryer; it is also due to the timing of the rainy season.  The monsoons of the desert Southwest arrive in summer.  In much of the Great Basin, precipitation falls as snow when plants are dormant.  Because most of Nevada has no drainage, snowmelt stands in low-lying areas awaiting evaporation, saturating soils with mineral salts that never make the sea.  The soils are toxic to an awful lot of plants, including many weeds.

 

I wonder how so many of the world’s plants came to be weeds.  Until recently, anything native qualified, and juniper are still thought to be in need of clearing.   Nevada is said to have had vast grasslands when the cattle arrived; the sea of sage is explained as overgrazing.  At Great Basin National Park, displays say the landscape is new due to fire prevention.  From driving around, I agree that northern Nevada was mostly grassland, but the pinion and juniper that drape mountainsides along US Highway 50 have been there for a very long time.  That can be a problem with scholarship.  Historical documents talk about vast grasslands and some assume that applies to the entire state.  Early travelers followed the Humboldt River where mountains and hills are simply sage.  It is a mistake to extend that description to other ranges of the region.  If the Snake Range was not thick with juniper and pinion pine 100 years ago, where did the evergreen abundance come from?  It takes hundreds of years to grow trees of any size in the dry climate.  Count the tree rings; fires were not routinely roaring through the forests.

 

There are some parts of the country, where burning the undergrowth is the same thing as burning up trees.  Nevada is not a land of towering pines like Florida or northern California.  The brush cannot be burned without torching the oak, juniper and pinion pine.  The many fires have more to do with climate change than unwise fire suppression.  When you go from three dry years in ten, to seven, fire becomes reality.

 

 

Suppressing fire with fire promotes grass, as any rancher knows.   A few years ago, a ridge burned not far from my parents’ house.  Before the fire, the flat was open, and most of the oak and juniper grew along the hillsides.  It was lichen-covered rock, dwarf sage, wildflowers and very little grass.  The quick burning fuel that drives wildfires was in short supply.  Afterwards, golden waves of grass tumbled into the woods waiting to be thunderstruck.  Instead of quelling the threat, it is raring to explode.  That might be why ranges that burn keep catching fire.    

 

 

 

  

Handmade Book
4 1/2 x 3 1/8 x 3/8 inches
2010

US Highway 50: A 500-Mile Stretch of Utah, Nevada Aridity Marginalizes Farming to the Edges of Great Basin

Intersection of North Harmony and Stillwater
oil on canvas
11 9/16 x 10 5/8 inches
2010
The agricultural area of Fallon, Nevada is on
the western side of the Great Basin.

On the 500 mile drive across the Great Basin, there is farming in the shadow of the surrounding ranges.  The one end of the highway mirrors the other.  However, everything in between is far too dry to support anything more than grazing.  If it were not for the many mountain ranges that rise and fall away on sliding horizons, there wouldn’t even be the short lived streams that occasionally fill dusty playas.  What I wrote below is based on a memory of impressions.  Having lived some of my life in rural Utah, I know farming is more than fields of green and quiet highways.

 



I photographed the fields of Fallon, Nevada so long ago that I wasn’t sure which way I was facing.  The light seemed to signify the east, and that was confirmed by the enlarging profile of Fairmont Peak as I zoomed in on a horizon of shaded debris, the hallmark of farming.  Even in June, the days are never long enough to complete all the chores.  Tire swings and irises divide houses from dusty ruts, outbuildings and alfalfa.  Lawns function as mud reducing turf for car chasing dogs bent on the senseless joy of barking.  Deep-rooted vehicles and discarded parts are indispensable links to laboring children home from school and the many families dependent upon backyard tractor cannibalization.  Farming can be like navigating a dead cow up a canal with a sunflower stock of a stick; the flies are a reminder of bloat in the reeds.

 

The image was cropped from three horizontal frames.  Although it was a shame to leave all that information out, it is nice to work vertically.  That is something I seldom do; I really like being able to describe the lay of the land.  However, the arbitrary nature of the composition still comes down to content.  The details equal design.  There is no need to rely of on fabricated relationships or kiss up to the picture plane.  The only things that matter are the things that do, and they are not the similarity of summarized shapes, patterns of textured gestures, the rhythms of obstinate stumbling blocks, the chime of untimely riming, focal points, undeniable plots, or graveyard junipers pruned to view Saint Patrick’s Cathedral more precisely.

 

The beauty of the question is asphalt and intractable weeds injecting seasonal green into sorted stones shouldering the pullover of lost and lonely motorists.  Not all are stranded.  Some come for the quiet splendor of the countryside, the home of those clinging to the land of ancestors, even if it was just Uncle Jim and his son Rob trying their hand at ranching.  Wealth resides on a porch of screened in evenings.  Crickets rise and fall in pale twilight.  Constellations are bound to rule the night.  Dogs yap, howl and bark at elusive horizons.  Moths bombard blinding isolation; a jackrabbit is hit by rolling headlights in the glare of hesitation.  The evening conceals the fatality of grinding traction in a swell of sweet smelling alfalfa. 

US Highway 50, Hinckley, Utah
The agricultural area of Delta, Utah is on the eastern side of the Great Basin

 

 

           

US Highway 50: Great Basin National Park, Bob Scott Summit and other Stops along The Loneliest Road in America, and a Painting of Playa



Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park, Nevada

 

In 2005, my brother Steve and I hit US Highway 50 to pursue a book devoted to The Loneliest Road in America.  The idea came from a conversation that happened while camping in Great Basin National Park.  Painting the highway had been on my mind for many years, and Steve being a writer suggested turning it into a book.  Having parents in Fillmore, Utah and Reno, Nevada, we grew up with a 500 mile commute between families.  I mentioned that in a statement written for an exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas.  There was sometimes an assumption that the title was a reflection on a lonely childhood when it was actually a description of place.  That is the official name of the highway.  Childhood was how I knew of the Great Basin.  I was never lonely in a car.  There was too much to see for me to be anything but engage.  The sky sailed high above pinion and sage as travel profiled range after range on a blue horizon.  Life got in the way.  The book never happened.  Individual passages written for specific paintings is as close as we got to that compilation. When I wrote the following, my audience initially seems to be Steve.

 

Playa

 

Playa
oil on canvas
17 3/8 x 7 15/16 inches
2009

 

It has been more than four years since we stopped in the little valley cradled between the outskirts of Fernley and the bend in the road known as Hazen, Nevada.  I don’t know where you were or what you were doing while I shot photographs of the hills and playa that framed the northern view of a land that lead to Lovelock and beyond, but it was so far away that it was out of view even in the clean crisp air of an unusually cool June morning.  Perhaps you were taking notes that could describe in concrete detail the memory of a land I just tried to communicate to you.

 

I was on the road a couple of months ago and passed this way.  The previous day took me as far as Bob Scott Summit.  Having no desire to travel the night, I crawled off into a sleeping bag in the back of the Sonata.  A starry sky filled the windows of my modest accommodation.  What a luxury that was.  The city intensifies darkness, burning out nearly all the shades between black and white, leaving night as subtle as compressed charcoal.  However out here in the pinion, the stars shine bright, and night is lighter than I ever imagined it to be, even in the absence of moonlight.

 

Morning view of Austin, Nevada

 

I left in early morning starlight and headed for Austin Summit to capture the rise of dawn.  I got out of the car.  I was glad to be wearing gloves.  October had frozen the shoulder of the road I walked along taking pictures of the pass.  Aspen slopes glowed green, yellow and gold, and the sage was weather-beaten.  In Austin, the first service station hadn’t open yet.  The next station was the only other station in town.  Its signage read pay before you pump, so I stayed on the highway.  Just outside of town, I reconsidered that decision.  Fallon was 111 miles away and there was no warning sign.  When you leave Green River, Utah, a sign emphatically states that the next services are 109 miles away.  I guess Nevada figures if you’ve made it this far, you already know there won’t be anything out there.

 

It was early afternoon by the time I passed by the playa; I had taken many pictures along the way making my travel time even longer.  It was not the same.  Two or three drilling rigs now inhabit the small valley.  The reason I am not sure of the number is I had no desire to document what I saw.  I realized that this end of the highway was filling in.  Americans are always looking for a home on the range.  However, because they want space to be convenient, the city grows out to where the wind blew not so long ago, unrestrained, kicking and chasing tumble weeds just to disturb the dust, never ever caring that the dust just wanted to settle down somewhere out on the playa.

Handmade book for Playa
4 1/2 x 3 x 3/8 inches

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

 

Thoughts on Dallas and Landscape Painting: An All Day Excursion of Richardson Heights Shopping Center



End of the Day at the North End of the Richardson Heights Shopping Center...
Left panel detail
mixed media diorama
11 7/8 x 63 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches
1987

 One of the joys of not having to rely on composition is that the entire world is open to you.  The world abounds in the local.  The exhilaration of travel can be had by riding a bike or strolling down an alleyway.  A walk across a parking lot can fill with a sense wonder. The peeling paint of a rusted dumpster may be a bit of a kick, a heart rising skip, the arrested freshness that comes with every new encounter.  With this state of mind, every day, every time of day, every atmospheric condition is splendid.  Life is even bright in stormy weather when design no longer denies a child eye view of everything as treasure.  A vacant lot becomes a place of nature.  Even blacktop and shiny metal cars beam radiantly.  Stepping towards the theatre, life happens in the wind.  Trees and shrubs throw off pollen dust to the flutter and buss of flying insects.  Car doors open and close in moments of lowly grandeur.

End of the Day... full two panel view

 

I once spent an entire day observing the habits of Richardson Heights Shopping Center.  I arrived before dawn, and left just after dusk.  It was Sunday.  There wasn’t much going on.  The Texas Blue Laws were still enforced.  Given the current political conditions of the state, the past could easily seem like a golden age of liberalism.  Anyway, the idea was to do an entire exhibition based on a single day in a parking lot.  I know that’s taking the idea of local to the extreme, but I was confident there was more than enough to see to make for a very exciting show.  Although I didn’t go that route, I easily could have, and some very nice dioramas came from the all-day excursion around the grounds of the shopping center.

The tools of the trade didn’t include pencils, sketch pads, canvas or paint.  The engagement with any particular place is too enjoyable to be distracted by the practice of painting.  I came to see and feel the life of a specific place in my neighborhood.  To help with that endeavor, I had a camera and a notebook.  I brought a folding chair to sit in and a tape recorder to capture sound.  Most of the noise was traffic.  The ebb and flow was the aggravated ease of a lazy summer Sunday.  The recorder also captured a chirping scurry of birds as dawn gave way to shape and shadow.  Early in the morning, a Corvette pulled into the north end of the shopping center.  The car door opened and a policeman stepped out.  Within no time at all, I understood what was happening.  The shopping center filled in with cars.   He was a crossing guard for those going to church.  There is no way to explain this if you have not lived in Dallas.  Although most people don’t seem that pious during the week, when Sunday comes around church overtakes state, and traffic patterns are managed to meet the needs of church going people.  When church was over, the parking lot quickly emptied out.  I wandered around taking pictures.  I noted business names, inspected litter and paid some attention to the activity of ants.  When you have all day, you have all kinds of time for long drawn out yawns and internal bouts of fascination.  Both modes of being seem to be completely compatible.  I noticed meandering cracks.  I stumbled on bits of scattered gravel no longer the embedded compression of blacktop conglomerate.  Faded paint, an exquisitely eroded layer of cap rock divided gray from gray.  The powerful glare of an ever present sun was everywhere.  In pale gray heat, little puffy clouds followed a shadowy path of quiet annihilation.

Around noon, cars crowded in around Wyatt’s cafeteria.  Dining out on Sundays also seemed to be an eventful part of going to church.  Dallas was the churchiest place I’d ever seen, and I grew up in Utah.  Perhaps, when religion is practiced that casually, there isn’t any cost to looking handsome or pretty.  You simply change clothes and persona.  Anyway, the one thing parking lots seem to have in common is an inability to encourage walking.  I once worked a couple of doors down from a fitness center.  Women drove around and around looking for the perfect spot.  God forbid if hips should have to walk.  I wonder if any of them stopped to consider how ridiculous it was to labor that hard to avoid exercise while trying to exercise.  Steps don’t seem to count for much unless they include dues, mirrors, and a cold interior of fitness machines.

Over the years, I’ve heard people say that people are the hardest things to paint.  Naturally as a landscape painter, I don’t much care for the idea.  The statement insinuates that trees are not as hard to paint as faces, and further proclaims that an apple, napkin and hat, and a cold beer stand in lower tiers of difficulty.  I am certain that is not in fact a fact.  Almost any mountain slope is far more varied than any variation in the human face.  The noted difficulty comes from a consciousness that places the human race as the crown of creation.  We spend all our time thinking of ourselves.  Even in societies where a reverence for nature was more prevalent, that reverence was still centered on the inhabitants of man.  With that mindset, nothing else has ever received equal time or consideration.  The standard for mountains has never even matched that of kitchen utensils.  Anyone can paint a mountain.  It’s not hard to see why we would have environmental problems.  We only see ourselves.  As a result, landscape painting has never received true scrutiny.  It is perfectly fine for a mountain to be nothing more than a few gray lines on a horizon.  Very few deeply care about nature.  You can tell that just by the way they drive.  A highway is nothing more than a forgettable stretch between destinations.   Since a person is not a tree, a cloud, or a sage covered bluff, there is no need to heed the particularity of how cloud movements continuously reconfigure cloud formations.  Many painters simply make the stuff up and never really seem notice that the grey underbelly of a cloud isn’t really any darker than the blue sky that surrounds it.  The same kind of laxness won’t fly when considering the profile and tone of a human face.  Try making one up.  You won’t get away with it.  That’s why I have a bit of a problem with the outdoor crowd.  They just paint to feel artistically free.  Painting outside has nothing to do with understanding the subtlety of light.  I think it’s time to put the people thing in perspective.  John Singer Sargent would never have had the success he had if he had plein aired the privileged faces of the Gilded Age.



End of the Day... left panel view

 

As evening began to settle in, my day of observation came to a close.  Although short lived, the pastel atmosphere began to relinquish heat.  After initial cooling, the air seemed to warm up again.  I know that’s probably not the case.  The sensation was most likely tied to increased humidity.  The sun had set.  It was safe for trees to begin to release some of the moisture that had been stored during the heat of the day.  The sound of crickets could not yet compete with cicadas, the noisy creatures of heat that pass the day away in marked intervals of intensity.  Deciduous trees leaned more and more toward evergreen.  Lavender meandered twilight across the sky.  Street lamps intensified the weight of darkness.  Starlight was nothing more than a glimmer of major constellations and possibly a passing satellite.   I snapped a few finals shots as evening settled in.  I loaded my stuff into the truck glad to call it a day, and drove home to my apartment on the other side of Central Expressway.




End of the Day... right panel view