"Home" in Mexico

The Road to Celaya
12 X 9 Oil on Masonite

El Rancho
12 X 9 Oil on Masonite

El Rancho Field
12 X 9 Oil on Masonite
First, I apologize from my long absence from this blog. Too much on my plate for too long...

But now we are back in San Miguel, Mexico, so things seem to have returned to “normal” and I have regained my freedom to paint and write. So let me share some of that with you.

This time of year here is the most beautiful, in my opinion. The rainy season has left us with green and lush foliage and vast arrays of flowers that can’t be described in words. And colorful festivals of all kinds. A painter’s dream... I’ve done a dozen or so sketches so far and I plan over the winter back in Maine to use them for larger pieces that I hope inspire us during the grim gray days of January, February and March. I’ve also gotten together with good friend Frank Gardner a couple of times for work in the field. This time of year the greatest challenge is to pick that one scene to concentrate on vs. the many that present themselves to you. So I show you some of the ones resulting from our work together.

“On The Road to Celaya” is a pasture that caught our eyes in the low morning light. One often comes upon these fields that are “down and up” off the road. They fascinate me because of the effect of less-than-normal atmospheric perspective (the result of the high altitude). So the effect of distance and scale is experienced with unusual clarity. In other words, distant objects appear to be closer than they are. Frank handles this really well as we all know. In this picture I used grays to make the far sections recede and to heighten the color contrasts of near and and far.

“El Rancho” is about 5 miles from San Miguel, underneath the mountains that surround the area. Frank knew about it because his daughter takes riding lessons there. It’s a beautiful place, and the owner, Holly, rents a couple of the casitas to visitors. I picked a view of one of them looking to the east into the mountains. The setting lent itself to a nice composition and several interesting plane changes–even if it is still just a house.

“El Rancho Field” is from the same spot as the above with a 90 degree turn to the right, facing south. Such wonderful colors and even more striking planes of light

Frank and I plan to do more together while I’m here, with others joining us, and we will probably return to Holly’s rancho a time or two. I’ll endeavor to keep up with all this on the blog, though finding an internet connection isn’t always easy. So bear with me.