Cimarron Sunset

"Cimarron Sunset," 9 x 12 acrylic on canvas panel

"Out here is the sky," has become my motto the longer I paint. Growing up in New Mexico  and living most of my life on the Great Plains, I've always noticed the skies, but art has intensified that interest.

At first, I thought the saying was Willa Cather's comment about the skies in "Death Comes for The Archbishop." It's not, and hers also resounds with me in painting as I study and try to capture the vastness and beauty of wide open skies in wide open landscapes.

"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”--Willa Cather

Long ago I canoed down a stretch of the Cimarron River during daylight, captivated by the silence, the moods, the solitude of the river--where human time doesn't apply. I hope this painting captures some of those impressions, reflecting the ever-changing colors of those skies at the end of day.

Soon available at In Your Eye Studio and Gallery where I'm a member artist in Paseo Arts District.