Yosemite

It's an all day drive to Yosemite. I was now on my way to New Mexico and had to get back to pick up my friend in Albuquerque on Sunday. I arrived at Yosemite and was lucky to find a campsite up at Bridalveil Falls, it is above 7,000 feet and is cold at night so there are sometimes vacancies.


I needed to make some new canvases. I bought some wood at a lumberyard in Merced. I made them on the picnic table as some German tourists looked on wondering what I was up to. It was damp under the pines and it took some time for the Gesso to dry.

I found another canvas packed away in the car and took off before I would miss the evening light.



I painted until dark and-- only remember waking the next morning,the cold tent and the beggar Jay's squawk.

Yosemite 2

I'm not thinking too much when I'm painting like this, out of doors.

My old friend Paul Georges always said something about being "willing to suspend ones disbelief."

I start to get impatient but it is the natural beauty here that takes over, and its early and I'm painting. I didn't realize that the scene would be so blue in the morning haze.

It actually makes it pretty easy to paint and it is mostly drawing into the blue.



I finished one painting and got started on the large canvas I made specially for now. I painted and wondered why it was getting hazier and bluer-- when I realized there was a fire and now, not just a little but really alot of smoke.

I was painting fast and thought I could finish but the smoke was fast enveloping the scene. I was too far along to make the smoke part of the painting.



As I had just been in another fire at Santa Inez, California, I wondered, again, if I wanted to paint the fire? Or try to ignore it?Was it something natural? I'd just had fun painting the fog in the Smoky Mountains, funnily enough this spring.

I didn't have time to make another anyhow and luckily finished the painting.

I found out later that the fire was a controlled burn. I still don't know what to think of fire, it is a troublesome affair,
supposedly natural-- but always problematic.