Escalante Backroad

"Escalante Backroad", 10" x 12", Oil on Museum Board
This is a dirt road off Cottonwood Canyon Road in the Grand Staircase Escalante near Grosvenor Arch. The main road after the first few miles is unpaved like most of the roads in the area, which is why we rented a 4-wheel drive for the last two days we were there.

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Contact me if you would like to purchase a plein air frame.

Sunset Escalante

"Sunset Escalante", 10" x 12", Oil on Museum Board
This is another painting that shows just how colorful Utah is, especially late in the day and early in the morning. There are so many geological layers, each a different color and composition. The Grand Staircase Escalante is made up of five tilted, southward facing escarpments called stairsteps, rising in all 5500 feet and covering 1.9 million acres.

Purchase this unframed painting.
Contact me if you would like to purchase a plein air frame.

Escalante Outcrop - SOLD

"Escalante Outcrop", 10" x 12", Oil on Museum Board SOLD
The wonderful thing about Southwest Utah and the Escalante is that there is so much color in the land. So this entire series is a study of warm and cool temperatures and also about keeping the colors in harmony.

Canyon Wall Escalante - SOLD

"Canyon Wall Escalante", 11" x 14", Oil on Museum Board SOLD
The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is a vast area of rugged canyons, rocks and cliffs with few roads in Southwest Utah. Many of the roads that do exist are impassable without a 4-wheel drive. The old jeep that we rented came with a GPS unit and a treasure map to ancient Moqui cliff dwellings and dinosaur tracks. We spent our days exploring and stopped every afternoon about 4 pm so that I could paint in the beautiful light.

Escalante Shadows

"Escalante Shadows", 10" x 12", Oil on Museum Board
I spent most of the summer painting outside--in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and the UK. It is a different experience painting from photos in the studio and a good time to try to put into practice what I learned outside. So I'm going to do a few more landscapes and then at some point this winter I'll probably switch to still life, as I like painting directly from life the best. The next series, including this painting, are from images from our trip last year to Utah where I did paint out on the land every day.

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Utah Cloud Study

"Utah Cloud Study", 8" x 10", Oil on Museum Board
This is another simple study of clouds over Utah. I am always drawn to painting skies and capturing the movement and ephemeral quality of clouds.

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Big Sky

"Big Sky", 10" x 12", Oil on Museum Board
This is another sky image from my trip to Idaho. Getting the feeling of distance is often a matter of warm and cool temperatures. I sometimes start out with a more detailed painting and then realize that's not how I want to paint, so I switch to my big brush and just have at it.

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Idaho Sky

"Idaho Sky", 12" x 16", Oil on Panel
Where I live in Western Washington the skies are beautiful, but often obscured by the trees--trees everywhere--and green everywhere. That is one reason I love the interior west--the big open spaces and the big skies.

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