Tuesday

I’m in Bend, Oregon now, drove up on Saturday and staying in an empty house that should have been filled with traveling artists.  Several cancelled out so looks like I am the only one staying in the guest house, which I can’t really complain about, at least it is nice and quiet. 

Craig Zuger gave me a call the next morning and we headed out to Sparks Lake up in the Cascade Range.  We hiked out to a point overlooking the water with a view of the South Sister Mountain, set up in the shade and started painting.  It was then I got a garbled cell call from Jim Peterson at the gallery, I found out later that he was just checking in with us. But the call was breaking up, as is the case with all cell phones. My voice carried across the water and that’s when we heard…”Richard Boyer, is that you?”  It was the un-mistakable sound of Bart Walker yelling across the lake.  The reception between us was far better than the cell phone. He joined us and I finished off this 12x16.

After lunch we all turned a few degrees and did another painting.  I picked a view of Broken Top Mountain, the remnants of a cataclysmic volcanic explosion that wiped out a large area some time ago in geological history. Seems like any one of these peaks could follow the route of Mount Saint Helens and take out half the state.  I actually had to bushwhack farther out along the shoreline to get this viewpoint with the foreground.     

Richard Boyer