Gallery One:

Gallery One: 1998 and Before

In September 1986 I packed my eldest daughter off to UC Santa Barbara, and with her a male friend. Both of them left piles of their former lives around my house. Among his cast-offs was a canvas crudely painted with a teenage fantasy: a green monster eating a man headfirst.

At that time my contact with Western art was limited to the Hillsborough Antique Show, admiring California painters who died before World War II, and whose works I could not afford. I have been a confident artist all my life in one medium or another; my degrees are in Theater Arts, and I have worked in set and costume design, fabric arts, calligraphy and manuscript illumination. But in November 1986 I came home frustrated from the antique show, dug a box of acrylics and an old Arizona Highways magazine from my daughter's pile, chose a subject, a photo of the desert, green after sudden rain, and got great satisfaction painting over the monster.

A friend arrived at the door. "Whoa," she said, "Where'd you get that?"

" I painted it."

"When?"

"Just now."

"How much do you want for it?"

This aspect had honestly never occurred to me.

"One hundred dollars."

She whipped out her checkbook and wrote me a check.

Click on thumbnails for full image

Lava Rim
acrylic on canvas
24 X 24 inches
Modoc County, California
1989

Painting from photographs is acceptable practice, so long as the photographs you're using are your own. My next few years were spent learning how to go out in the real world, locate images of the west I wanted to paint, and bring home photographs adequate to the job. The subjects I found were mostly from the high desert country of northeast California, This is the earliest of which I have a record photo.

White Horse Flat
Acrylic on canvas
16 X 20 inches
Modoc County, CA
1994

Modoc County again. South of the lava, the forest is denser, and has not burned in recent memory. In this forest are large open prairies, which turn to lakes in the rainy season. One of these is Whitehorse Flat.

Early
acrylic on canvas
12 X 24 inches
Antelope Lake,
Plumas County, California
1994

Getting up, getting dressed and walking out in the forest with a rifle before sunrise is very productive activity for a hunter. Getting up, getting dressed and walking out in the forest with a camera before sunrise is equally productive for an artist. The two pursuits can be combined, but it's hard to hold a rifle and a camera at the same time.

Stonebreaker Plantation
acrylic on clayboard
5 X 9 inches
Shasta County, California
1995

This painting is a miniature, 5X9 inches, painted on clayboard for the smooth surface.

Foxes
acrylic on canvas,
20 X 30 inches
1994

During those years I did some commissioned portraits, of which this is perhaps the best.

Meat Ain't Meat 'till it's in the Pan
acrylic on canvas
36 X 24 inches
1996

Copy of the 1914 Charles Russell original,
located in the Gilchrist Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma

I was also asked if I could Copy Charles Russell. And Indeed I could. It was very educational. I would love to paint exactly like Charley Russell.

On the Siding
Acrylic on canvas
10 X 30 inches
Goffs,
San Bernardino County, California
1994

In the early 1990s I began to take part in the 4-wheel-drive explorations sponsored by the Mojave Desert Cultural and Historical Association. The MDHCA is based in the historic Goffs schoolhouse, thirty miles northwest of Needles, California, adjacent to both the Santa Fe Railroad and Route 66. My subject matter moved with me, from the north end of California to the south. And since MDHCA members were enthusiastic patrons, many of my paintings are of Goffs and its vicinity. This is, I believe, the first one: it hangs in the front hall of the Goff's schoolhouse, where a look out the door compares it to the view it represents, west along the railroad toward Clipper Mountain. The Santa Fe rolls through Goffs every fifteen minutes or so, twenty-four seven.

The Turtle Mountains
Acrylic on canvas
30 X 30 inches
Ward Valley,
San Bernardino County, California
1994

Spring, 1992. We had caravanned through the Old Woman Mountains (behind the viewer in the picture) and car-camped the night in Ward Valley under the hardest rain I have ever seen. Next morning we drove across the valley, and through the Turtle Mountains, with (in places) a foot of fast, clear water running down the road.

The End of the Line
Acrylic on canvas
10 X 30 inches,

Goffs, San Bernardino County. California
1995

Morning light again.

Pettit's Well
acrylic on canvas
20X30 inches
Round Valley,
San Bernardino County, California
1996

In 1996 I asked Dennis Casebier what subject in the East Mojave he would like to see me paint, and he suggested Pettit's Well, with its windmill, corrals and cattle tanks. It was a fortunate choice, because the place exists no more. It was destroyed in the Hackberry Fire of 2005.

Goffs 80
Acrylic on canvas
10X30 inches
Goffs,
San Bernardino County, California
1996

I have spent many happy hours sitting on railroad tracks at dawn or sunset, waiting for something to come along: in this case, two helper engines barreling eastbound down the grade from Barstow to Needles, shining in the morning light. One sign gives the name of the siding, the other, maximum speed.

Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies
Acrylic of Canvas
11 X 14 inches
Pinto Valley, San Bernardino County
1998

The Husong family, mother, father and son, homesteaded in the East Mojave in the 1920's. The boy attended a one room school there, but when he reached high school age, the family moved back to civilization. Dennis Casebier of the MDCHA has interviewed the son, now in his eighties, and keeps a collection of the Husong's photographs, small, poignant, black and white. Here, surely, is the American Dream; the wild, free landscape, the well-built cabin with outhouse and garage for the Model T out back. The boy hip-deep in the field of grain to show how well it's growing.