Deep Springs College, California

Deep Springs College is on the border of Nevada and California near Bishop, CA.

I taught painting there in 1995. Its a great place. They study Melville and Nietzsche in the desert.

I brought a painting (above) for them to have there at the school, and they were glad to have it. I am usually offered a nice meal and a place to refresh my horses, there in on the edge-- of the middle, of the desert .

I came across the last ridge of mountains and it was 113' I was too worn out to paint but took a film of the road winding down the hill into Deep Springs Valley.

The Sierra looms up behind the Glass Mts, and is still after all these years--quite a sight. Californ--ia!

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Sedgewick Ranch, Santa Inez California

I am teaching painting at a summer program at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There is an out of control forest fire up there at the moment. So we have been painting it. It is hard to feel this is a natural phenomena, but when it flared up in the middle of the afternoon to that sublime-- beyond remembering type experience. We all were lost in painting it and some part of--.

Later that weekend looking at photos we could remember the height it reached, it sounds corny but we marveled at the memory. Cliche and archetype are so very close together in reality.

I am often dangerously close in my making, to that cornball moment. I remembered the cover to Susan Sontag's, Volcano Lover, I remembered it as a neapolitan type of Italian gentility, an artist"sketching" with crossed legs-- as the fire roars out of control.

Oh, this is also the ranch Edie Sedgewick, the Warhol star grew up, adding a strange flavor to it all.

California Coast

Made a last painting at the Sedgewick Ranch-- of a road, it seemed like arriving, or as I was actually-- leaving.

The burnt rolling hills now behind, the coast of California is amazing to come upon. Mythic really, as Robinson Jeffers tried to show in his poetry, he came close. The coast is still without its poet equal to it's natural ordering and beauty.

Kenneth Rexroth, comes to mind, Gary Snyder, too. My favorites Whitman and Stevens never saw this coast.

Though Whitman wrote..."FACING west, from California’s shores,

(But where is what I started for, so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)





What one is surprised by is the particular color unto itself. The water with the white sand beneath can be a tropical viridian color. The purple and ochre kelp beds and the grey blue fog banks moving in and out, create a constantly changing light over the scene.

I was with a friend and we painted at Julia Pfeiffer overlook, that evening, arriving to Big Sur. A Scrub Jay, squawked and seemed curious, I remembered one which accompanied me ten years ago when I painted here.

Like the activity of painting this brief going over, anchors it all in my mind, the form of which makes it a physical reality-- it stays in memory.

Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California

The next morning we woke on my friends property above the Big Sur coast. Some foxes looking for food came right up to us.



We drank coffee and watched the fog and the dramatic change in light as the sun broke above the ridge behind us.

We got our supplies in order and took off to paint at Pfeiffer Beach. There is a big rock formation, with a hole, the waves splash through. I painted it all before, and I felt I knew it, like seeing an old acquaintance.



It is always windy there and it is a challenge to paint. I painted right at the entrance to the beach, and there was a feeling of arriving. I went farther out and painted some huge drift wood, maybe redwoods trees.

Pt Sur

We painted this evening up at Pt Sur.

The ocean was unusually calm and produced the heightened viridian, in the ocean shallows. There is a great shape of white sand beach extending from the block of land called Pt Sur. We saw cattle down lying on the beach below. I never saw that before.

Years ago I sneaked onto the private property, nestled in the Monterey pines out of the wind. I remember writing in my notebook that evening "like having stepped off a ship," the wind and deep perspective, the blinding sun, all creating that effect.

We made a painting, and I had 20 minutes to make another quick painting as this sun once again slipped down. I made a similar one in the early 1990's. I have repainted that scene numerous times in my studio.




I made an 8 foot square studio version which was in my show in Santa Barbara last year.

We drove home slowly, winding on the road and had that deeply satisfied feeling. The stars above in the dark-- and the black silhouettes of pine.

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.