mountain clouds paris airport bakery

 mountain paintings i am working on...trying to make a painting of something without really painting something, trying to get the paint to be the clouds...also a prayer flag still life, and paris bakery, paris airport bakery

 

monday morning

 heaven is a collection, so satisfying to my obsessive heart to see everything gathered up and classified, on the glass shelves.  The Uinta Mountains (below) are the only east to west ranging range in the USA, and the painting is all about life insurance, it makes perfect sense.

Tahquitz and Temple Crag

 Behind the tent, that is temple crag, we did the 15 pitch moon goddess arete.  This mountain is in the eastern sierra, in California. We left camp at the emerald green lake at 5:30 am and returned at 8:30 pm. The first five pitches took less than an hour, the next 5, another 5 hours, since we decided to rope up.  The mountain tops out at 12,999 feet. The mountain is also falling down, with loose rock everywhere.

 Before climbing temple crag, Howard and I flew to LA, then drove over to Idelwild to revisit Tahquitz, to climb whodonit.  Unlike the rock on temple crag, the granite on Tahquitz is solid, not falling to pieces.  We tested out the 80 meter rope, combining pitches whenever we could. It was 7 or 8 hundred feet of challenging climbing.

good luck setting things on fire

 the quiet brighton path, the dark trees, the bright mountain

 i remember when i was little, i talked my mom and dad into teaching my how to use matches, so i could make the camp fire in the morning, which i was extremely good at.  This became an obsessive interest in fire, i wandered off to deserted areas of the neighborhood and burned little fires...someone gave me some fireworks, since i was talking about Cai Go Qiang.  I needed to set them off, so that i could use them for a painting, and i wanted to used to make a  painting.  But it is not easy to set off fireworks, after the legal firework season is past, to discretely have roman candles and firecrackers and sparklers going off.  I opted for the inside of a garage, using an old drawing as the basis for a fire drawing.

“The more I practice, the luckier I get.”

(Twyla Tharp)

I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck.  Look at the luckiest people around you…they’re prepared, they’re always working at their craft, they’re alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.

door to the river

 country road sign and a city door, it seemed like they went together somehow...door to the river?

george inness...

 The George Inness with the dark figure offers a reminder that we maybe life goes somewhere, that we always carry that companion connected to the next world

studio wall

red rocks, Nevada

first steps are hard: hypothetical drawings

drawing at the beginning of a painting

 I found some drawings I had stored away in Port Washington, two are monoprints, two are mandalas,  and one an illustration from The Dream Jar.

monoprint

mandala monoprint

montana mandala

The Dream Jar

monoprint

First steps are hard  (Twyla Tharp)“We believe our ancestors are watching us, even if we do not see them,” Sina Koy said.  “It was because of the spirits of the ancestors inside me that I became a dancer.” .”  For it so happens that I have never been able to convince myself the dead are utterly dead.  I admire rational people and envy their clear heads, but what’s the use of kidding? (Saul Bellow)

painting studio

 the 1893 George Inness, November Montclair, one of his last paintings, he died in 1894.  A vague path, emerging in the distance, leaving things behind, perhaps. Sort of what life is about.

studio objects

the mountain studio

I found this painting, I thought I would work on it, also the handmade paper arrived in the mail

medusa

 the walk, at 5:45 am, from big cottonwood canyon to little cottonwood canyon, brighton to alta, to hellgate slide area, to visit the infamous climb: medusa

 the sunrise, over twin lakes, at grizzly gulch

looking around for web site designs, i rediscovered the balbusso twins, left, and below.

gear organization day