Gallery Nineteen:

Gallery Nineteen: 2016

This year I suffer from an arthritic neck and an unsteady hand, whether due to (A) Parkinson's, (B) Essential Tremor, or (C) some other neuro-degenerative syndrome is yet to be determined. My cataracts will need surgery soon. But so far, I can still paint. The Death Valley Art Show has also fallen on hard times: this year it shrunk to half-a-dozen artists, and was held on a forbidding patch of windy, sunblasted gravel outside the main gate of Furnace Creek Ranch next to the Highway. But between there and Goffs, I still painted and sold paintings.

Click on thumbnails for full image

Eat and Reminisce
Acrylic on Canvas Board
12 inches X 24 inches
Intersection of Hwys 223 and 99, west of Arvin
Kern County, CA
2005-2016

Beryl's Cafe, built in 1917, a famous old place in the middle of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" country. Clark Gable and his crowd would hang out there whenever they drove up from Hollywood to the hundred-or-so hunting clubs near Bakersfield. It stood at the corner of old Hwy 99 and Bear Mountain road. I first saw it around 2005, when we changed our route for getting to Tehachapi (and thence Death Valley) to scenic Bear Mountain road instead of the nerve-wracking crawl through downtown Bakersfield. The roof was already sway-backed, but the fine old roadhouse was very much open and in business. They claim its biscuits and gravy were the best around. I snapped a photo of it in passing every year.

The Meek Inherit
Acrylic on Canvas Board
12 inches by 24 inches
2016

Turkey Vultures aren't black. Their big, beautiful feathers are fifty shades of bronze on top, and silver underneath. And to top it all, they're irridescent. A small venue of Turkey Vultures roost part of the year at Goffs: See "Study the Past." I go looking for their shed feathers. Actually, as with eagles, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1915 makes it illegal to possess their feathers, them, or any part of them, to the tune of $15,000 and six months in jail. Unless you happen to be Native American. But at least I can admire their feathers.

The Stage to Rhyolite
Acrylic on Canvas Board
12 inches X 18 inches
Rhyolite
Nye County Nevada
October, 1906-2016

Here is my latest weigh-in on the subject of stagecoach realism. From a hundred-and-ten-year-old black-and-white photo of the stage ferrying would-be millionaires three miles from the rail-head at Beaty to the Bullfrog gold strike, and the latest, greatest boomtown of Rhyolite.

Coyote? What Coyote?
Acrylic on Canvas Board
8 inches X 10 inches
Death Valley
Inyo County, CA
2016

This comes from yet another photo by George Rodney, of the same beautiful creature I painted last year in "How Coyote made himself Invisible," snapped just before or after, when he happened to blink.

Kristy and the Muddy Beast
Acrylic on Canvas Board
12 inches X 24 inches 2016-2017

It's been my custom at the MDHCA's yearly fundraiser to donate a painting for the silent auction—typically a view of the Santa Fe with Goffs Butte in the background. This year I didn't manage to deliver. So, I offered instead to paint a subject of choice for the high bidder. I said, "I do not want to paint your kids or your dogs!" I expected the choice to be some subject of interest in the desert. The winning bid was by Phil Motz, who has appeared numerous times in my work. e.g. "Giddyup," "Might Even have to Move Inside," "Phil in the Flag"