"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Sons of the Pioneers theme for TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon artist's musings melding metaphors and journalism, for readers in more than 150 countries.

Thursday, March 11, 2021

"Out here there's the sky."

"The sky, the sky, the sky," 9 x 12, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico rough press paper

"Out here's there's the sky."

That phrase has become the mantra for much of my art work. 

When you grow up in New Mexico and on the Great Plains, the sky, the sky, the sky.

At first, I thought I stole it from Willa Cather's great phrase about the sky in Death Comes for the Archbishop, but no, hers is much more descriptive and better written.

“Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”

But she inspired me, as do the skies out here.  I remember my first watercolor teacher Cletus Smith telling me about one of my early paintings that had a sky I questioned: "Somewhere there is a sky that looks like that." 

Still have that painting, hanging in the house...a constant reminder.

Today's watercolor is  testament to those comments. 

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