 |
| Hanging On / 8x10 Oil / Available |
 |
| Rattlesnake Cliff / 9x12 oil Available |
You've all heard the joke. How many people does it take to paint a painting? Two—one to paint it, and another to say when to stop.
I've been painting long enough that I've developed an internal monitor that stops me before I overwork a painting. (Well, not always—sometimes, apparently, he's nodded off.) Once in awhile, though, external factors stop me, and often prematurely. Case in point is the active monsoon season we've had in New Mexico this year.
If you're not familiar with monsoon season, it's characterized by daily afternoon thunderstorm activity, followed by clearing and cool evenings. Although we're thankful for these storms because they slake the thirst of our high desert, dangerous lightning often accompanies them. They make hiking—and outdoor painting—risky outings.
Why? Because the storms rise up quickly. You can start your hike on a perfectly clear, blue-sky morning, and by noon, the first thunderheads are already billowing up. Moments later you'll hear the first crack of thunder. The clouds then swell into a black wall and unleash a cannonade of blinding flashes, earsplitting cracks and the occasional deep, rolling boom that lasts almost forever and occupies such a low spot on the auditory register that you can feel it deep in your gut. These storms are not to be toyed with.
So, I offer to you two paintings that I began on a beautiful morning that became victim to monsoon season. In each case, I painted about 30 or 45 minutes before that first crack of thunder. As I tend to favor cliff tops and other high perches, which are the worst places to be in a storm, I quickly retreated before becoming a statistic. (Check out this link on lightning fatalities.) The good news, though, is that I was able to go out the very next day and finish—but only moments before the next round of storms started up.
