631, oil and original acrylic gel transfer photograph on back-framed panel, 24 x 18 x 2.25 inches.

Two months ago, I wrote about the wildfires consuming the forests. The Las Conchas fire became the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, burning more than 150,000 acres, a third of them the first night, fueled by 60 mph winds. I watched it from my front porch, wishing I could do something for the animals made homeless or worse by the inferno. From my back yard, I watched smoke from the Pacheco fire, burning ten miles up the watershed. I started this painting when the fires were new. They continued, and I continued, for weeks.

I began by photographing an abandoned gas station at 631 Cerrillos Road. It had been a street art magnet for fifteen years. When I photographed it, I did not know it would be cordoned off and demolished within a few days. The disappearance of the gas station coincided with the erasure by the forest fires of human-built structures in the forest and of other, less tangible constructs that a fire of this order brings into question. 

As I lay awake at night listening to the whir of water-bearing helicopters, the howling of coyotes, and the drone of planes dropping chemical goo on the fires, the painting began to take shape.  I applied a mirror image of the gas station photo to a panel, using the acrylic gel transfer process, and then several layers of PVA ground.  The gas station became a place of uneasy refuge for the forest animals I painted over it in oils.  Meanwhile, bears and deer roamed the night streets of Los Alamos, driven into the strange urban landscape by the destruction of their habitat and nourishment.  When I completed the painting, our summer rains finally arrived, and the fires were out, leaving 160,000 acres of charred wilderness.    

I found a beautiful pigeon with a badly fractured wing on a ridgetop in the wilderness. I've never seen a pigeon in the backcountry before.  I ran for about a mile with her carefully wrapped in my shirt, and then drove her 20 miles to the wildlife hospital.  The fracture was recent but gnarly; I fear they euthanized her. 

She was so calm and sweet, and dare I say trusting. She had such presence.   What an adventurous bird! 

I do not usually name wildlife, but if there was a name for this bird, it would be Amelia Earhart.  I often make a sort of offering to the animal in the painting; a symbol, some flowers, corn, snow; whatever comes to mind.  Hence the painting's title, Apple Blossoms for Ameila Earhart (oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches).  May she live long and well. 

My newest painting, Baby Javelina Thriving at Wildlife Center (oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches) has been written up on Santa Fe Reporter staff writer Wren Abbott's blog.  Thanks, Wren.

News flash: it rained!

Las Conchas Fire, Day 1, from my porch, 60mph winds

Up until a couple of nights ago, I could see the flames of the Las Conchas Fire running along the ridgetop and down into canyons 20 miles to the west, and shooting 300-500 feet or more up into the sky. About 1/5 of the western horizon is still glowing like the huge ember that it now is. There is another fire closer, in deep wilderness about 10-15 miles to the north, near our ski basin. If it comes running down the watershed, it will be at my house in no time, if the winds blow from the north.  If the fire gets into the watershed, though, they will fight it aggressively. 

My home is in no danger at present. Wish I could say the same for the animals in the forest.  And the residents of Santa Clara Pueblo.  After all of the prayers for rain, they now have to worry about flash floods and erosion, since the fire took their watershed last week.

The air has been smoke-filled for a more than a month. We have  lost hundreds of thousands of acres, within a 25-mile radius, to 2 fires.  Not to mention the massive Wallow fire still burning after a month, in Arizona and now western central New Mexico, the biggest fire either state has ever seen. 

I feel pretty helpless.  Animals talk to me in my dreams, asking for succor.  I am working on a painting of ravens, a coyote, a fawn, a rabbit, and fire. 

This is the worst drought in NM recorded history.  The forests are still a tinderbox, but we finally had a brief rain yesterday.  May it be a harbinger of things to come, and may it come gently to Santa Clara.

Tassel Eared Squirrel

The Conversationalist in a Contemplative Moment,
oil on panel, 10 x 8 inches.

Here's the latest piece in my Horizontal Brothers series.  Can you tell that I am slowly wending my way through John Muir's collected works?  This little guy is an Albert's Squirrel or Tassel-Eared Squirrel.  They shed their ear tassels in the summer.  The painting is a portrait of a being I see frequently in Bear Canyon, near the Randall Davey Audubon Center.  He lives pretty far back in the canyon, in a huge ponderosa pine.  When I run by, he makes a loud noise, usually by pushing something out of the tree, which always gets my attention.  Then he comes down and poses for me, often with hands on hips, giving me hell in squirrelspeak.   I placed him in a snowy setting to protect him from the forest fires that are still burning to the North and West.  I have begun work on another squirrel I see frequently at the Audubon Center, a ground squirrel who is much more shy.   

Polaroid of My Mother

New work: Polaroid of My Mother, oil and photographs on back-framed panel, 12 x 12 x 2 inches.

This piece is from the series I am working on called Horizontal Brothers--John Muir's term for non-human animals. It is new and different for me to be working the vein of realism, albeit expressive, abstracted realism.  Wildlife paintings are coming fast and furious.  I am now working on ravens and a mountain goat.

This painting began when I went to K-Mart to buy plastic magnetic picture frames for my fridge.  The photo in the frames recalled a polaroid I snapped of my mother when I was 10.   While I was looking at those nine identical photos, the painting formed in my mind.

I've met eight  mountain lions in the wild, the most recent on the last winter solstice, in a nearby forest--the first one I have seen in its truest element--the night.  I've seen more mountain lions than I have bobcats or foxes.   I feel like a lion magnet.  All of the lions were fairly disinterested in me. 

My most recent lion acquaintance had been marking all of the human trails in an area where I run, where national forest meets city.  Leaving scat strategically at the beginning and dead center of every human trail in an area is unusual behavior for these cats.  I avoided the area for awhile, but I knew it was a matter of time before we met.  I don't usually run at night, but there I was, under a full moon, on the solstice, in the snow.

There he was (an adolescent male, I believe), 25 yards ahead of me, planted across the trailhead as I finished up my run, in the exact spot he had marked earlier, his eyes fixed on me. As I met his gaze, all of his molecules soundlessly rearranged, 180 degrees, into a mirror image of the position I first saw him in, without his taking his eyes off me. Then, just as soundlessly, he dissolved into the forest--gone. 

I went back the next morning to track him in the snow.  Had I not seen the tracks, I might have doubted the whole experience. He had taken off up a steep pine-covered slope in 10-15 foot bounds.  After that night, I saw his markings less frequently, and then not at all.  Most likely he followed the deer to higher altitudes with the warmer weather.  May he live long and well.

Horizontal Brothers

Under Orion, On Coyote's Watch, oil and mixed media on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

This winter, I took an unexpected five weeks off of painting--the longest hiatus in my life.  Now I am back in the studio with renewed energy and a new direction. 

I am calling my new series of paintings Horizontal Brothers. That’s what John Muir called animals. Though the phrase is dated in terms of gender, I like it.  It implies equality — that we are all animals.  Which of course we are, but many of us spend a good deal of energy denying it.  Encounters with wildlife have always been my most magical moments.  It is in these brief encounters that we are the most sure—and the most unsure—of who we are.

I grew up with wildlife.  My mother had a talent for healing animals.   People brought wounded and orphaned wildlife to our door, and, under her care, many got better.  She never refused an animal in need.  She grew up in the backwoods and had no veterinary training or college.  She did not speak of her gift, but she practiced it diligently and with considerable humor.

A rehabilitated fighting cock lived in our kitchen, a recovering raccoon on the back porch.  A starling rode on her shoulder.  Rabbits were everywhere, including my bedroom.  A red-tailed hawk found floating in a barrel of dirty motor oil stayed for a year before he was rehabiltated and released.  He returned each year with a mate, lighting on my mother’s arm with a melodious keen when she whistled. 

 A new crop of fledgling birds and kit rabbits were either healed or buried ceremoniously in our backyard cemetery each spring.  It was just a matter of time before wildlife became the primary subject of my paintings. 

Coming soon: mountain goats, rabbits, deer, and, of course, a red-tailed hawk.