I quite agree with you and June about the stories in photo #1, not to mention the irony in the name “Golden Touch.”

June,

One problem photographing far desert vistas is the usually blank sky, which tends to dominate the picture at the expense of the small, distant mountains. Large prints help out the far desert and mountains, but there’s still the balance problem. Hockney would (II think) say that you look at the mountains and experience them as nearer, because that’s where your attention goes. With a single camera viewpoint and focal length, you can’t make the image area balance reflect the attention balance. That is (in part) what he was attempting with his photocollages. Did you know Lawrence Wechsler has published 25 years of conversations with him, much like his book on Irwin? It’s called “True to life”; I’m reading it at the moment.

Even Ansel Adams has few vistas quite so wide, and only when there are dramatic (or at least interesting) clouds to relieve the sky. If you can’t arrange clouds, standard procedure is to find interesting foreground that leads to the background. I’ve always found this much harder to do than it sounds. But along those lines, I really like how, in your photograph, the white sculptures of The Last Supper find an echo in the snowy peaks far beyond.

I need to comment on your first photo — it is gloriously intricate, imaginative, and full of information and intelligent confirmation of the human condition as we (or some of us, anyway) know it.

Your photo gives an incredible sense of place; the bicycle riders and the truckers, the buildings and the reflections of buildings, the stoic nature of the humans, small against the rest of the info, and the final coup, the name of the truck: “Golden Touch.” What a great photo in exactly the way Karl describes. It’s got rhythm and a Big Bass boombox throbbing from every corner.

Yep it is in Death Valley, but I’m 5 miles from Death Valley Park, and just over the Funeral Mountains from Scotty’s Castle. “Just over” is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. But we really are almost on the California border and the topo map of the Beatty area includes part of Death Valley. Yesterday, I painted mountains that are in the park.

Isn’t Scottie’s Castle over in Death Valley proper?

I’ll check out Mueck — never heard of him. I will be moving on to bigger paintings here in the desert (the “Back Wall” canvas roll that I brought with me); I always need to have that first sketch, in my case a painting, before I can face the intricacies of weaving memory and scene, idea and vision, color and scheme. So your thought of working big is in my head.

On the other hand, I still have a lot of downtown Beatty to deal with — wacky street scenes and all. And there are the touted sights to see — Scotty’s Castle, the Amargosa Opera House and Performance, Gold Point where George (don’t ask) wants me to paint the vista. So I’m not really holding out a lot of hope for the back wall. But you never know. And there’s stilll the foolish Rhyolite take-off to be worked until it works or dies. Ah, so many paintings, so little time.

It is so rewarding to peruse your photographs for the stories they tell. My eyes first bounced off image #1, but a second look began to reveal a weaved tale. Golden Touch, the big shiny bus, is leaving an older version of New York, while reflected in its big windshield is a sinuous vision as Gehry would have it,

I can imagine that the bus driver is, in actuality, a real estate developer. Reading to the right, we find an oriental representing a more sustainable path up the boulevard of dreams. Who will make it first to the next intersection?

Image #2 had me confused as the child was lit differently from the tree – but, hey, there are a lot of reasons how that might happen. But what appears to be an acoustic ceiling atop a seeming outdoor scene – now that got me going (It feels like I’m channeling Columbo here.). And the overall composition is bright and fun. Now for the schlepper in her leopard skins: leopards will schlepp their prey up trees for safekeeping. But the leopards I know don’t tend to do a heads-down trudge – and in boots moreover. But what do I know of the urban jungle cat?

June:

I took in your painting while eating my corn flakes this morning. The work touches on your comments in that it is a synthesis of your memories and a record shot of the gorge. As I remember, a fellow named Bierley took it and it comes across as something anybody would capture at a scenic turnoff. Perhaps the pedestrian nature of the photo worked to your benefit as it doesn’t impose a heat and serve sensibility that you would needs confront, thus allowing you to adjust the spices to taste.

As for the desert vista, I wonder how it relates to that savanna sense that I sometimes bring up. Something primate in me becomes alert in open situations. I want to take in and register the furthest things in my field of view. I’m out of the trees and on my knuckles these days and it sure pays to know what out there is heading my way. The camera doesn’t care and is likely to take an indifferent attitude to one’s all important relic concerns. One thing that seems to matter is the sheer size of the image. Take your desert shot and splash it across an entire wall and something of that feeling may be returned to you.

Finally, the name Mueck came up in my readings. “Ron” maybe? He does the big figures and it seems we had a discussion along those lines.

I shall ponder your notion about flat views, abstract art, and visual technology. It seems like a plausible hypothesis.

I also am having dialogues with myself about color — my desert scenes are far too colorfully painted compared to “reality” (as the camera, unphotoshopped) might see it, And yet, and yet — the color is there. I learned that long ago, when I spent those formative years (ages 23 — 29) in Laramie Wyoming. The desert has fantastic color and it’s just that sometimes people only see the grossest version of color — billboards and flat mat graphic design. And that’s not even accounting for the changes that occur with the time of day and the angle of the sun…..

Oh dear, I must be on my second cuppa…

By the way, I am maundering my way in a Journal about the residency — lots of photos, some turgid text. I am not making it available to search engines but if anyone reading this would like to check out the pretty pictures (and even make comments, but not too snarky ones), write me at june at juneunderwood dot com and I’ll send you the link.