Three brushes

This 11 1/2  inch by 15 inch watercolor by Ron Ranson is part of our art collection. I attended a workshop of his in Taos about six years ago, and had to buy one of his works.  He is known for "Watercolor Fast and Loose," painting  with just three brushes, very few colors. On top of that, he has one eye, and was a technical artist in Britain during WWII. He's since married and moved to the United States.

He's also known for the many books he's written, and his training videos. I've bought most of them, and got him to sign some too. Check his website. http://www.ronranson.com/  I'll admit...I consider this purchase an investment. I've tried painting his way, and am just too uptight to really let go, though when I do, it allows me so much freedom and creativity. I come closest when I'm painting skies or end up going abstract, as with the painting I posted back in February, called "Leaving Home." I've since framed it, and named it "Homecoming."

Tomorrow on the blog...art from Mali

Moonrise over Taos, watercolor

9 by 12 watercolor, 140 pound d'Arches paper
Moonrise over Taos, from the Rio Grande gorge

A flag and woodsmoke

The grey clouds were spitting snow and hiding the Truchas peaks as my uncle Mike and I drove up the High Road to Taos one Thanksgiving afternoon.  Winter had come to northern New Mexico, and we had left the sanctuary of his Santa Fe apartment to retrace separate paths we'd both taken years before. 9/ll was still fresh on our minds.

We turned off the main road to wind our way to a village named Cundiyo. It's a small place with thick walled adobe homes perched on the hillsides leading down into a valley. Less than 100 people live here. It's unincorporated, inhabited as the result of an 1743 land grant from the governor of Neuvo Mexico in the capital at Santa Fe a few miles south and more than1,000 feet lower.

Pickups of families were parked on gravel and dirt outside the homes where Thanksgiving feasts were underway or where people were watching football games, telling stories. Woodsmoke poured from metal pipes, and beside each door were stacks of split wood for the coming cold season. Corrals held horses huddled against the wind, and the smell of pinion and juniper and smoke filled the air. They have electricity and plumbing, but heating most heating comes from wood stoves.

And on several adobe walls and coyote fences, far from New York and the Middle East and hatred, hung American flags, and the black POW/MIA flags. New Mexico car tags with "Veteran" labels were everywhere.

People  may wound America by bringing down the towers or killing at the Pentagon. But those who do so have no idea of the depth and breadth of America's people and country. When  the American flag drapes on walls in places the world has never heard of, like Cundiyo,  the woodsmoke of a free people will endure.