Cardinal Jewel
12” x 16”
Contè á Paris on paper

Notes: What a great experience it was creating this plein-air piece, although not without its challenges! Personally, I welcome them, and am not deterred; I think many would be. I’d like to describe some of the surprises you can face creating art out in nature-at least, where this piece is concerned. Of course, you could cross some pretty spot & simply pull off to the side of the road, & there you go. Easy-peasy. Hiking into this spot required me going off beaten paths due to deep mud, to hike through thick, knee/thigh high, wild plants. You do your best to avoid cactus, stinging plants, chigger/ticks.. Multiple times I was bitten by ants & had them all over me, just sitting in the spot making this piece. It’s like they’d come out of nowhere. Mostly they left me alone, but they were always crawling on me & my stuff. Frequent visits and landings of all types of bees and wasps, mud dobbers… other strange bugs, I have no idea what they were. I half rolled my left ankle leaping over a sketchy area, so I wrapped my foot for several days. Several times the weather flipped on a dime, & a downpour begins. Immediately you protect the art, & begin packing up your gear. This was 1.5 mile hike-in & out location. The sun can beat you down quite a bit, even though I’m wearing breathable, high spf-rated clothing, putting on sunscreen & wearing a wide-brim sun hat. You carry in your water, snacks, art supplies, chair, etc. It’s all rather mellow and enjoyable. I didn’t see a single person the entire time, each of the 5 visits to this spot. On 1 of the trips I got setup, & immediately the weather changed, & I had to leave. All of this I describe is a grade-A good time. But for the really special parts? Sitting and observing a single patch of earth like this wild field & surrounding hillside, let me watch God’s design at work. Every part is more creative than anything you could possibly imagine. It can take time for moments of thoughtful clarity to hit you. And if one sits for long enough in nature, it will do this to you. It provides much healing or some kind of health benefit. It’s like spending lots of time in the waves of the ocean; Just observing how it all works and flows together. Lucky me to be an observer of such beautiful creation. Sometimes while I work, I hardly know what the piece actually looks like that I’m working on; I’m so locked into a state of observation. Doesn’t really make sense does it? I’ll be heading home and think, “what does it look like, todays work, I’ve not actually ‘seen’ it?" The rich carpet of all kinds of flowers and grasses, feeding and beautifying the landscape. All of the butterflies and bees flying about, happily working and pollinating the plants. The buzzards overhead on trash patrol. The hawks with their keen eyes roving the skies. All the song birds, lizards, roadrunners… frogs. The delicate bunnies coming out at the cooler parts of dusk, hopping along so gently. The elegant and graceful deer who are so at home in the trees. I was snorted at once; quite a smiling experience to know I’ve irked a deer; she really wanted me to know she was not happy to discover me sitting in her neck of the woods. I included the red cardinal who visited me each time I was there. The first time he was sitting just at the edge of the wood on some skinny dead limbs. (Middle, far right of the piece, and is basically made up of a a tiny, single red mark). This cardinal checked me out on the last day by flying up to the tree just behind me. We checked each other out and He sang several songs. It felt like they were a gift just for me. He knew I was there. I believe it was the same cardinal each time. A difficulty on the piece was the thousands of ball shaped flowers, which had several lighter tones on one half facing the sun, and darker, grays, greens and browns on the backside. The size to scale is basically little more than a fat pencil mark. It’s a challenge with Conté s well; they’re often too delicate to hold such a fine point and transfer the material without breaking. So I went for an inferred tone, blanketing the landscape. And then used a pointillism-type approach. The particularly striking flowers, there was more of an effort to enlarge them and include them."