Summer Shadows on the Great Plains

"Cloud Shadows on the Great Plains," 14 x 20, 300 lb d'Arches cold press paper

When you live on the Great Plains in the summer, the heat and humidity build clouds of all shapes and sizes.
When you can see a long way out there, across the rolling rural landscapes, the clouds  ever-changing shadows dance across the fields and hills in a windy, moving symphony of shapes and color.
Today's watercolor, the largest I've painted in a long while, is a larger version inspired by by the previous one, "Room to Breathe." That became sort of a "study" or warm-up by the intimidation I feel when working on large paintings.
Given the pandemic and the racial crisis we're trying to survive, 
I  thought of  T.S. Eliot's lines from "The Wasteland" that capture some of the truth we're living in now. 

            “Between the idea
        And the reality
        Between the motion
        And the act
        Falls the Shadow”

It's interesting to me how often I think of poetry and literature when I'm painting, and our national mood seems to be a metaphoric wasteland. 
To offset that, I wanted to try to capture the peace, beauty and vastness of the Great Plains. To me they're also a metaphor for our freedoms and future. I hope this painting approaches it. Can't wait to get it framed.
The colors on this photo are not exact, because it's taken outside and reflects some of the blue of the sky, but it's close. My signature is under the big fence post, which the camera lost the detail on.

By Dawn's Early Light, new day, new month

"Dawn's Early Light," 6 x 9 cold press paper

A new month dawned, with 2020 now one third passed, in the year of the pandemic.
Excitement and hope seems to meet May, though seasoned with much caution, because the pandemic is nowhere eliminated. scientists and health care workers fear the worst could still come.
But at least we're through April, living up to T.S. Eliot's (1888-1965) famous lines:
"April is the cruelest month.
Let's hope so, even if May doesn't live up to 
British author Thomas Dekker 's (1572-1632) poem:
"O the month of May, the merry month of May,..."
Yesterday was the only day of the month I didn't complete a watercolor and post on this blog. Too much unsettled stress to try that antidote, though I did study some watercolor techniques via You Tube.
But--to try something different based on yesterday's studies--to greet the new day and month, today's watercolor attempts to bring more color and hope to offset the pandemic pandemonium.

Going "viral" with thoughts on words and vaccines

"Virus," 5 x 7 watercolor, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press paper

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper."
                           --The Hollow Men (1925), T.S. Eliot

 Twenty-First Century tech and globally co-dependent humanity,   having adopted the words "going viral" for its digital amusement, suddenly finds how deadly the term is, and how vulnerable "civilization" is.
This one apparently won't wipe out humanity, if it doesn't mutate, but it is in the process of crashing the world economy and causing untold physical and financial misery. But it's not the first and it  won't be the last one.
There is real irony is our previous use of  the term "going viral" in these times, but at least we have began using a better word--"pandemic."
I'm not a paranoid doomsday prepper--and besides, all survival gear  wouldn't stave off a virus. 
One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 infected about 500 million people worldwide, killing from 20 to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. 
There was no vaccine for flu then; the first was invented in 1938. If there had been, I'm sure there wouldn't have been any "anti-vaxxers." (Have you had your flu shots?)
It's possible that another virus gave us the English word as we use it today. The Black Death arrived in Europe in about 1347, and proceeded to wipe out from 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population. 
Then, in the late 14th Century (1300s), Late Middle English used the word to  perhaps denoting venom of a snake, also  a "venomous substance," from the Latin "virus" to mean "poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid, a potent juice." It probably comes from Proto Indo-European root *weis- "to melt away, to flow," used of foul or malodorous fluids, with specialization in some languages to "poisonous fluid" (source also of Sanskrit visam "poison," visah "poisonous.")
So pardon me if I my thoughts on virus go virally off on several tangents. And today's watercolor.