Roads to imagination

"Road to nowhere," 5 x 7 300 lb. d'Arches cold press paper

The back roads, the wide open spaces, journeys of imagination.
When I'm cooped up, as in not being able to travel, suffering most from a "New Mexico attack," I find both an antidote and an infection from people I follow on social media in specific interest areas.
I get daily photos and some blogs on New Mexico, and also photos on Scotland. They feed me, and make me hungry. they also inspire me.

William Swanwick's terrific "Road to nowhere."

Such it was with a black and white Instagram photo by William Swanwick, @swanwick_w,  this week, titled "Road to Nowhere." 
This is not the first time one of his photos has provoked a painting. I painted "Purple Dawn" from one of his in January. Purple Dawn
Today's isn't as good as the first, but it was in some ways more fun. Since it was a black and white photo, I could be even more creative, with the colors. It was a road to imagination.
So here it is, a painting manifesting my urge to get on those unmapped back roads, no fences, far horizons, and dramatic skies.

The colors of restless wanderlust

"Early Start, Dawn on the Santa Fe Trail," 8 x 10, 140 lb Fabriano Artistico cp

Every day of quarantine in this pandemic makes us more restless, especially those of us infected with wanderlust, the urge to travel.
It's even worse when you've grown up in the wide open spaces on the Great Plains, or in the West with big skies and far horizons.
I usually think of those restless adventures who risked their lives on the Old Santa Fe Trail, taking the even more chancy Cimarron Cutoff through what is now the arid Oklahoma Panhandle and northeast New Mexico..
It's no wonder that the photo at the top of this blog is from that area, one I took a few years ago heading east across the old trail, headed for home at early dawn.
Thus today's watercolor, my imagination at work, where you can still see the ruts of the trail, and in your mind's eye, the wagons headed southwest nearing Santa Fe--the colors of wanderlust, "Early Start, Dawn on the Cimarron Cutoff."