Wednesday

Today I pulled out an older 40x30 painting that was lying around the studio, blew off the dust and worked on it.

Next month on the 18th of February I have a one man show at the May gallery down in Scottsdale. So I better have a few works to bring down with me, or else the owner, Ron Bailey might be yelling at me for slacking off. This scene, from Provence I had lying around the studio for over a year now. It originally had a wall where the stone steps are and in the wall I had an open door with a window above it and sure enough the painting had this closed off feeling about it...........not a very good idea if your trying to get somebody interested in buying it. That's why it was retired to the dark catacombs of the studio.

Well.........I painted that ugly part out and added the stairs from another study I did and now one has the feeling of exploring back into the scene. I'll send this one, the other 40x30 painting of the stairs with cross above and a few more down to Scottsdale before I drive down next month.

From Salt Lake the drive is not bad, just a short ten hours in the car. Just after Beaver, Utah I'll head over to highway 89 and south through some nice red rock country. Then south of Kanab along 89A over the north rim of the Grand Canyon and down into Lee's Ferry. After that it gets a little boring through the desert until you get up into Flagstaff.

I did this trip once with Nick Rees, my contractor friend. He brought along a highway geology book about the different areas we were driving along. Way back when, in geological time the mountain there was twice as tall and blew up much like Mount St. Helen's did. Driving up from the back side you can really see the large open crater the explosion left behind. In fact you can see large boulders of volcanic carnage a hundred miles before you even get to Flagstaff. They say it blocked off the entire Grand Canyon and formed a massive lake behind it. From there at 7000 feet with Ponderosa pines everywhere, you descend down below 1000 into Scottsdale with palm trees and saguaro cactus everywhere. When its 70 degrees down there, I can't complain.

The middle of February up in Salt Lake City can be cold and snowing. Heading down there for a weekend of sun, isn't all that bad!


Richard Boyer