Ready for the Handoff

Ready for the Handoff

Oil on black canvas, 30x40

Please click here to email me about price and availability

I'm so glad I changed my plans and spent time taking photographs of the Pony Express riders, back in January. I know I'm a little nutty about the whole event, but it transported me, brought me to the Old West, made me imagine - with a clarity I'd never experienced - what it must have been like to live back then. 

Also, I have kind of a thing for cowboys and horses. That's very much the 21st century me - but again, I think it's because they evoke a time and a way of life that call to me. I know I wouldn't REALLY want to live back then - with outhouses, woodstoves, gas lights at best, and exhausting days filled with the hardest kind of living and working. Of course, I don't want any of THAT... just the wide-open spaces, the clean air, the beautiful horses and the sense of adventure and discovery. 

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REMEMBER, I'LL BE at Center Framing and Art, 968 Farmington Ave., West Hartford Center, CT, on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. If the weather is nice, I'll be outside, painting. If the weather is yucky, I'll be inside, hanging around...

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Dog of the Day

Today, the Dog of the Day, AND the odd extra item I try to find regularly for you all, are one and the same. This is Abby, our plott hound, up on the bed while Peter is still sleeping. 

Abby has a strange habit of finding Peter's boots and bringing one or both of them to wherever she is. She doesn't chew them, or do anything to them. She just brings them. I think they're her comfort, her binkie. Funny, eh? 

The stuffed squirrel that you can see above is a different story. Abby takes all the toys away from the puppies, especially the new toys. The squirrel is the newest one, and just before I took this photo, she'd slunk up to the puppies and yanked the squirrel away from them. This, she will chew up, de-squeak and disembowel. 

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A Final Thought

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." 

- Pablo Picasso

Pony Express!

Pony Express

Oil on canvas, 10x10, sold

I was driving through the mountains on a back road from Holbrook, Arizona, to Scottsdale, when I saw a big hubbub ahead. Lots of police cars, flashing lights, a line of traffic. When I came up to it, I was amazed to see that the police cars were surrounding a guy riding a horse along the side of the road. 

I passed, and a little ways up the road, saw another guy, dressed in a long duster, waiting with his horse. A little ways later, another. It dawned on me that I'd seen historical marker signs naming this road as the Hashknife Pony Express route - and putting two and two together, I realized that I was watching the Pony Express. 

I drove past the riders and entourage, and in a ways, stopped at a store to get gas. The guy behind the counter told me that, indeed, this was a once-a-year running of the Pony Express, and that the riders were carrying real mail from Holbrook to Scottsdale! Each rider goes a mile or two, then the next rider picks up. They carry 20,000 pieces of mail, each stamped with the official Pony Express logo! You can read all about it on the website. This just seemed like the coolest thing - and the first fun thing I've seen on the trip. So far, this trip has been nothing but fear - a giant snowfall, the mock jury and visiting four galleries, seeking representation, all worthwhile, but all scary. 

So I changed my plans, turned around and went back to see the riders again, and paint! I painted the scene, leaving a space for the horse and rider, and then put him in. Later, in Payson, I saw all the riders riding in a line on the last leg, to the post office. 

Here's my painting in the landscape

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THE PONY EXPRESS painting was sold to my first sponsor for the Arizona Byways trip. This is not as structured as my recent trips, but sponsorships are still encouraged. Sponsors will have first choice of the paintings I make on this trip. I plan to paint in and around Tubac, and on some side treks, too.

A 10x10 sponsorship is $125. Please click here to email me if you want in.

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Scenes from the Road

Antelope just wandering the streets in Springer, NM. 

Dinosaurs dot the Arizona landscape. Above, a display in Holbrook. 

Below, a display in I-40 just outside Holbrook. 

Some good-looking donkeys in Kansas, above, and a Kansas landscape, below.

Snow in New Mexico

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Dog of the Day 

 I saw this lunatic Corgi in a small town in Oklahoma. 

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A Final Thought

"I found I could say things with color and shapes 

that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."

- Georgia O'Keeffe