Hey good to hear from you. I meant to write back to you about the painting that you gave to Mesa Verde. It seemed just right to me when I looked at it a few months ago and now seems even more right. I know you struggled with the problem, but I think you got it right. The Great Sand Dunes should be an interesting set of new challenges — how to make them interesting without losing what they are. But that’s often the challenge, isn’t it? Not much human intervention to pester you there, I suspect. But then, I haven’t seen the dunes since, ummmm, 1972?

I found your Mesa Verde painting again on your blog, so I’m going to post the very long url: I hope it takes. It seems to me that you and I work with some of the same issues. Your website images of the city are wonderful — I hadn’t seen them before. You are capturing something there that intrigues me. Here’s the Mesa Verde link for A&P readers:

http://hodge-artandnature.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-06-14T17%3A59%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=7

I continue to work on Carr — god willin’ and the crick etc. — I may post here again tomorrow or Saturday about what I’m learning. Mulitple viewpoints, among other things.

We’ll be going back to Nevada in November — always up for more difficulties. Just about the time I may have something about greens down, I’m going back to tans and grays. But I think maybe Carr has something to teach me about the void — connecting to the sublime as Edmund Burke would define it. An old A&P topic — I may have to revisit it.

I’ve got another residency this fall at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. I’m looking forward to the lack of vegetation and the dramatic shapes.

And you did catch my brag — sometimes I can’t resist, particularly when I feel like I’ve made an heroic effort. What I don’t mention is that I fall into a stupor after such an effort and laze around eating cherries and watching the spiders spin their webs. It seems to be a hangover from my college days when I pulled all-nighters before the tests and slept three days afterwards. In some activities, I seem to continue those age-old patterns.

Good to hear from you.

I am waiting for another Old Holland paint to apply a glaze to my first landscape painting, hoping that it will help.

Rhythm may well be the key, although there’s also negative space and shape to be considered.

I always think of Pollock when I think of overall complexity, but thinking of him doesn’t help me paint well. Squinting at the scene to make the details murky and thinking of masses as forms/shapes helps me more, particularly when I’m faced with unfocused, overall scenes. But I’m still learning. We should go back and study Steve’s photos.