Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The best time of the year

 Big Red, oil on panel, 10 x 10 x 2 inches

I've been drawn to baby animals of late.  Perhaps I should title the series "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Cute."    
The best time of year is here, and I am getting out in the wilderness as much as I can.  Land art resonates with me the clearest when I stumble upon it and it is not created by humans.   This tree is a "scrape," used by a small mule deer buck to rub the velvet off of his new antlers.  Once deer find a scrape, they return to it.  This tree is girdled and its fate sealed (or peeled).  It will be a standing home to many for a time and then it will fall and slowly become one with the forest floor, new life springing up in its form.    
   
What painter could come up with so balanced a composition?  The aspen leaves flow in an unbroken line out of the red striations in the rock.  The streams in the mountains and foothills are  waning as the harvest moon waxes.  When I'm out running, I'm never far from a brook, always mindful of the munificence of water dakinis in a desert.