The first painting for my solo show next year at the Abend Gallery to come out of my recent tour of the National Parks of the South West in the USA. I loved the vast scale of the landscapes and the big skies that hung over them and got most of my reference shots on the roads between the parks. Maybe because of the altitude (?) the contrast between the blue sky and the white clouds was so intense and I wanted to get that across in this painting, not sure I have and think I might leave the bright desert sun behind and return to the more familiar shores of evenings etc. The location in this painting does not exist (these are all kind of symbolic paintings) and is actually an amalgam of three different locations plus some imagination and invention. I'm fascinated by how people live in relatively hostile environments like this one somehow clinging on despite a lack of water, power and shelter from the relentless sun. You see individual houses or communities way out of town in the parched hills and land living in self-made buildings with seemingly no viable income source at least not from the land but every one of them has a car or truck parked nearby without which I am sure they could never survive. Living on the edge...
Oil on canvas 31 1/2" x 12".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.
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