Days Past

I finished Days Past this morning shortly after the morning ritual of watering my bonsai  and my other plants.  The jump back and forth in temperature caused half of my bonsai's leaves to die off.  There are now a bunch of new leaves sprouting, but there are now some barren branches.  I guess in the future that will just give the little tree character.


I really like this piece with it's stormy sky.  Painting these two works of Portland's Bridges has me dreaming of Portland Oregon.  Being a desert rat who has grown up underneath sun bleached cloudless blue skies with heat waves radiating not only off the roadways, but the desert floor itself.  I find the grey moist clouds of Oregon and Washington so refreshing. I think that is why in my paintings I always paint weather filled skies rather than the typical blue skies everyone else seems to paint. Whenever it rains I run outside and stand with my eyes closed and my face turned up to the sky.  I love the rain. Whenever it rains while I'm at work I always wish I were in my studio painting with my doors flung open listening to the rain batter the roof. I admit partly because the humidity makes my acrylic paints mix beautifully and they don't require all the extenders to retard their drying. I give painting lessons to my friends up in Portland and sometimes find I have to work on multiple canvases due to the drying time in comparison to Arizona.


For me there's nothing more depressing than a sun bleached cloudless sky on a 110 degree day.