Gallery Threee:

Gallery Three: 2000

Much of my effort in the year 2000 was spent memorializing the derelict days of two great buildings, the 1909 Las Vegas and Tonopah railroad depot in Rhyolite, Nevada, and the 1923 Union Pacific depot at Kelso, California. 2000 also saw the demise of the OX Cattle Company, one of the last working ranches in the East Mojave. The Overson family, whose home it had been for a hundred years, in the end found coexisting with the new East Mojave National Preserve too difficult, sold their property to a land conservancy and moved their cattle off to a new spread in Arizona.

Click on thumbnails for full image

The Vanishing Point
acrylic on canvas,
24X48 inches
Kelso, East Mojave National Preserve
San Bernardino County, California
2000

In October, 2000, I asked Sean McGuiness, at that time Chief Ranger of the Preserve, what scene he would most like to see painted. Without hesitation he replied, "The depot, as it is now, abandoned and crumbling, so we could hang it there after the building finally gets restored."

Where the Pavement Ends
acrylic on canvas
12X24 inches
Rhyolite, Nevada
2000

Having painted the Kelso depot, I returned to earlier photos I had taken of the depot in Rhyolite Nevada. The light was dull, and I had not known what to do with them. But I had other pictures of nearby Beatty, Nevada, with orange sunset light making the hillsides flame against a threatening sky. In fact, due to the mountains at either side, I'm not sure when, or if, the sunset ever gilds the Rhyolite depot. But that's the way I painted it, in the same format, but half as large as the Kelso painting.

Darwin Graveyard
Acrylic on canvas
20X20 inches
Darwin, Inyo County California
2000

I saw and photographed the Graveyard on a 4-wheel drive excursion, with cars and photograph-snapping people everywhere. And you can't wait till they all leave, because you're leaving with them.

Yellowjacket Goin' Home Time
acrylic on canvas
Siskiyou County. California
2000

We were hunting in Modoc County, and had taken the afternoon to drive west into Siskiyou, up and over the shoulder of Mount Shasta on Military Pass. Coming down we encountered road work, and were held up for some minutes. Shasta makes her own weather, but near sunset it all blows away toward the west. That year there were many, many yellowjackets, and as I took my pictures I thought how nice it was that yellowjeckets all "punch a time-clock" and go home at night, and by the time we got to camp, we would have our dinner to ourselves.

Arlen
Acrylic on canvas
12X12 inches
MDCHA headquarters, Goffs
San Bernardino County, CA
2000

Arlen had been a sheepherder, a rancher and a heavy construction man by occupation, but by avocation he was a dutch-oven wizard. Here he is with his stacked-high pots full of pork stew, offering you a sample on the end of a fork.

Sunset and Low Tide
acrylic on canvas
8 X 10 inches
Coal Oil Point,
Santa Barbara County, CA
2000

My daughter Jessie was, for some years, the Science Officer of the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper organization. Part of her many duties was to plan the Bluewater Ball, an annual fund-raiser. In the spring of 2000, perhaps a week before the event, it occurred to her that I might paint a seascape for her silent auction.