Clearing

10"x 20" oil on canvas
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I've painted this scene near Bryce Canyon, Utah, once before. Still trying to get it right...is it better than the original, below?  The original sold at the Marriott Craft Show a few years back.  I like how I used a little more red in the trunks of the trees in the original...maybe I need to try it one more time.

Evening in Zion II

Evening in Zion II
5" x 7" oil on board
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The annual Marriott Craft Show is coming up. I usually do well there, so if you've been thinking about buying something, this might be the time.

Evening in Zion

Evening in Zion
5" x 7" oil on board
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This is an image of Zion Canyon from our tour of Utah's national parks. I can't wait to take our daughter there when she's old enough. Pretty good light in this one.

Utah Highlands

Utah Highlands
8" x 6" oil on canvas panel
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I (think) the reference photo for this painting was taken somewhere along US Highway 12 between Capital Reef National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.  It has been a few years since my wife and I toured all of the national parks in Colorado and Utah and some of the images run together.  All I know is that it was beautiful and highway 12 through Utah is one of the most spectacular drives I have ever taken.  I love this painting; the photo turned out ok, but I promise it looks better in person.  The highlights on the branches of the birch trees and the the warm shadows on the trunks are some of my best work.  I think I've made some breakthroughs lately.  When you focus on value and color, the details work themselves out. 

Virgin River, Utah

Virgin River, Utah
8" x 10" oil on canvas panel
$70 plus shipping

This is the Virgin River in Zion National Park, Utah.  I mentioned this a few posts ago, but we camped here for three nights during our trip out west.  There were no bathrooms, so our only method of bathing was to hop in the river.  The average daytime temperature during our time in the park was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, however, the water temperature was 55 degrees.  Refreshing to say the least.  Our little spot by the river was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

On another note - I've mentioned this before, but it is often more difficult for me to get a decent photo of my paintings than it is to paint them.  I spent two hours this morning trying to take post-worthy photos of my last six paintings.  It's useless to paint an awesome painting and then post a photo that doesn't do it justice.  All of these paintings look better in person than they do online. 

Orderville Junction

Orderville Junction
8" x 6" Oil on canvas panel


This is Orderville Junction.  Orderville Junction is the merging of the north fork of the Virgin River and Big Spring in Zion National Park, Utah; a section of The Narrows hike.  I added a little patch of blue sky in the top of the painting to allow for exit, but the canyon is actually 2000 feet deep at some points and so narrow in places that you can spread your arms and touch either side.  You're not allowed to attempt the hike if the water flow is above a certain threshold; Sarah and I had waited for three days for the river to come down to a safe level.  We didn't think we were going to get a chance to do the hike, so we went ahead and did a different, nine mile hike.  However, as we were loading onto the shuttle after our hike, we heard that the Narrows had opened.  So, after hiking nine miles up and down Zion Canyon, we decided to hike another 6 miles; three upstream and three back, mostly in waist/chest-deep water, over bowling ball sized basalt boulders.  Oh, and the water temperature was approximately 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  That aside, the hike was amazing and definitely worth the effort.  I will never forget bathing in the Virgin River; air temperature105 degrees - water temperature 55 degrees.

Here's a photo of Sarah and I at the end of The Narrows hike.  Sorry for the gratuitous shirtlessness.

Sevier River, Utah

Sevier River, Utah
8" x 6" oil on canvas panel
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This is the view along the Sevier River from the intersection of route 12 and route 89 near Bryce Canyon, Utah.  Sort of.  I've been thinking about painting from this image for a long time, but it needed some adjusting to work, compositionally, as a painting.  The house in the top left quadrant is not really there, but I tried to make it the main focus by using the highest value white and putting the darker shadowed trees around it.  I Google Street viewed the scene again before I started to write this post, and it brought back some nice memories from our trip out west a few years back.  

Storm on the Mesa

6" x 8"
Oil on Canvas Panel
$25










I painted this from a photo that I took out of the car window during our trip out west last summer.  The location is somewhere near the border of southern Utah and Colorado. Rain is rare in this area during the summer, so it was pretty cool to witness a storm on the mesa.

'Clearing'

12" x 24" Oil on HD Canvas
$150 plus shipping - Sold

This is a painting of the valley just west of the Bryce Canyon "Amphitheater" in Tropic, Utah.  I painted it back in the beginning of July after my wife and I returned from a 17 day National Park tour of Utah and Colorado - I've been a little lazy about posting.  I thought I would do a lot more painting from the trip than I've done, but I feel like none of my photos do the scenery justice.  Plus, I've been a little preoccupied with finding a job and now preparing for that job, which is teaching 8th grade Special Education English...I have a lot to learn and a ton of work to do so the posts and paintings may be limited for a while.  But, one of the many reasons I wanted to teach was so that I could have my summers off to focus on painting...ahh, already looking forward to summer!  Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze some paintings in this year, but we'll see.