White Sands Memories: Snowglobe

We interrupt the Children's Book series for this one night painting on wood. (Literally; I started it at 4:00 PM this evening, and finished it about 15 minutes ago.)

I have to say this is one of my favorite landscape pieces I've ever completed.

The landscape is of White Sands, New Mexico; one of the places I visited in my whirlwind month living in Truth or Consequences, and, overall, one of my favorites. There is a harsh, evocative beauty to that landscape, especially in summer, where the sky is bluer than blue--a near surreal shade, and the towering thunderheads of the Monsoon thunderstorms quite frankly look as if they are the only thing holding the sky in place, keeping the vault of the heavens, the cosmic dome, from falling upon your head.

I tried to consciously combine in this piece the styles of both Van Gogh (who never saw the southwest--sadly--but oh, the paintings he would have done if he had!), and Georgia O'Keefe (who did live in New Mexico and paint such places). This is based on a photograph I took on August 16, 2012.

I entitled this "White Sand Memories: Snowglobe", based on a comparison and discussion I had with one of the visiting AIRs to Starry Night, Lauren Carly Shaw, on her second day in New Mexico about how living in the southwest was like living inside of a snowglobe--the mountains form the edges, and the skies are the dome above--the difference, I remarked at the time, being there's no snow. At White Sands National Monument, though, the sand is even whiter than the whitest snow.

The place is entirely unearthly, and the silence is intense. So intense, I could hear the thunder from thunderstorms in the mountains about 20 miles away. It was akin to walking on the surface of an alien world. And I loved it--I can't wait to go back.