Kingdom Come and Went

Just completed Kingdom Come and Went. It's another super wide piece. I think this format works really well for the abandoned gas station/desert works. I think it highlights the one aspect about the desert outside of the heat: it's expansiveness. The desert has several places where it's flat with mountains in the distance that in more humid climates would be obscured by the atmosphere. There's lots and lots of sky and the land just seems to stretch out before you in every direction; forever. It's odd to write about this, because this is really quite normal for a desert kid like me. Whenever, I'm away from the Southwestern Deserts it may take a while, but I notice the lack of expansiveness and endless blue sky.

The title popped in my head right after finishing the painting. The title has some religious undertones, but I think for me personally it's my perception of how these small desert towns were once booming and now are a year or so from becoming ghost towns. I just imagine a gas station owner, perhaps a mechanic by trade who buys the a station just off the highway and runs a prosperous business. Then over time with more fuel efficient cars business just slowly slips away until he can no longer keep the doors open. It's as if all his dreams came true to own his own prosperous company, but times change and he finds it slip from his hands like grains of sand. Like his kingdom came and went before his eyes.