I’m on the road with Jer, working on painting scenes from many tiny hamlets in the high desert of eastern Oregon. We started on Monday, it is now Thursday, and I have eight 12 x 16″ plein air oil paintings in my boxes in the back of the Honda. I also have a peeling nose (in spite of all precautions against the sun) and a whole set of images, some photos, some memories, of Oregon’s outback.The paintings are too raw to be shown right now, but here are some photos of things I painted:
The Heppner, Oregon, courthouse and uplands
The Condon Library and Lennox Heating and Cooling Store (circa 1903, erstwhile bank and saloon)
The Sahalee Park in Madras, Oregon
Grain Elevators, Ione, Oregon
There are a couple more photos of places I painted, but this gives you the flavor of the trip.
Here are some places I didn’t paint, but may still have to:
Here are some observations: the faint smell of manure wafted on a slight breeze can stir many memories in the country-raised painter. Teenagers in eastern Oregon hamlets who gather at the local mini-mart on hot July nights are likely to be heard screeching, “Oh, My, Goodness!” An unpaved, one-way lane in Canyon City is named Rebel Lane; I painted at the foot of a driveway on Rebel Lane that sported an American flag, a car with a “W in 04” bumper sticker, a ribbon of red,white, and blue, and a humongous truck with an Okie Drifter moniker. A UPS driver jokingly stopped immediately in front of me, totally blocking my view, and asked if that was a good place to park. I waved, he waved and drove on.
Country north of the John Day Fossil Beds is in full harvest right now, with combines dallying down narrow roads and sheets of golden wheat flowing over the undulating uplands. The scene resembles Nebraska or Kansas, except that the draws and arroyos drop abruptly into canyons (some of which one drives down), canyons lined with basalt and sagebrush.
Painting two paintings a day cures all one’s creative impulses, at least for 24 hours. The internet has become integral to our existence, and the consequences of being without are dire, even when the painting is good. The Prairiewinkle Inn in Prairie City, east of John Day (the city) is a fine place for a painter and her long-suffering partner to hole up and check in with friends.
June,
You seem to find it easy to paint almost anywhere, so I’m not sure my question applies at all. But I was wondering if you find subjects more readily in these places with which, I assume, you feel less familiar than with Portland. Are any subjects recurring, like the grain elevators, or the dry hills at the edge of town?
June:
“sheets of golden wheat flowing over the undulating uplands”— you came up with it, what are you fixing to do with it? It begs for more action. Somebody – Irving Berlin? – used a similar image iconically. It feels rather pagan to me: begowned priests and priestesses, adorned in laurels of grain, holding the great sheet aloft to the wind in an offering to the waiting land. Better done, perhaps, with the gift of Bacchus and three sheets.
Hi Steve and Jay,
Steve, I spent a lot of time in Wyoming and Kansas during my “formative” years (22 — 45), so many of the bucolic scenes as well as the high desert uplands are like coming home. The small towns, too, have a familiar feel since I never lived in a city until 1989. However, there’s really the danger of the generic (as well as the quaint); I am aware of the edges off which one can step with a misplaced bit of sunshine or a perky pine tree. Being aware doesn’t mean I don’t make tumble down the arroyo, but at least it gives me hope that I’ll be able to work something out in the studio.
Jay, those sheets of undulating grain are very arthur Dovish/ Grant Wood-ish (have you seen Grant Wood’s funny cartoonish landscapes?) I”m not sure about the iconic gleamer image — I think the Kansas state capital building has a copyright on it. Bacchus, indeed, might make improvements.
I’m back from an early morning painting of a barn in a meadow with the STrawberry Range of mountains behind. A little waving grain, too, but mostly just glints in the sunlight. We are off to Baker City today, with forays into Sumpter and perhaps a venture to Haines or Halfway. A couple more days of intensive painting and then I get to stop and play in the Idaho mountains.
Gotta run — we have to be out of these digs in about 20 minutes.
I’m eager to see how you’ve worked these images onto your canvas. Some of them (the taller, straighter ones) seem halfway between urban and pastoral — by which I mean, the grain elevators remind me of a transitional structure that might be an evolutionary link between the hoodoos in the Colorado Plateau parks (Bryce Canyon, especially) and the skyscrapers that make a canyon of Sixth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Verticality seems to be calling to you recently.
I am partial to the Grain Elevators.
I grew up in Ione. The grain elevators brought tears to my eyes.
Thanks.