Branding the 7V

That's me on the right....making all the smoke. This was a time in my life that today, only seems a fantasy. I was living in the middle of 40,000+ acres and playing cowboy. What kid (of my age) didn't dream of doing that! My rational for being there was that I was doing research for paintings...but my heart (and sore muscles) said I was hiding from reality. I got to saddle up, bath in the horse troph, ride around in pickup trucks and look at cows....and generally savor the essence of a life most of us only saw in a movie. I was no cowboy...but I sure enjoyed the life of the land and most of all, the people of the true earth.

Dancer. Watercolor

An exercise in brushwork! Painted on 300lb Arches paper. This piece is almost calligraphic. Very controlled brushstrokes, wet on dry as well as wet in wet background. Pushing the color to it's limits. How could I miss with such a great model.

Dusty Saddle Watercolor

If I am not mistaken, (and often I am), this painting is in the collection of the Great Plains Western Art Museum in Lincoln, NE. I actually owned this saddle at one time. I am actually rather proud of this painting. I was pushing the "temperature" of the color. Notice the blues and violets on top and the bit of red hot along the back side of the cantle. That's about the time that my friend Oleg Stavrowsky and I were sharing studio space and he was the master of hot and cold running color! He would tell me, in his Harlem accent, "Gav-ry (for Gary)...it don't matter if you put the paint on with a mop...if it is believable and the temperature is right, you have succeeded." Thanks, O.

Colorado camp watercolor

There was a time when some friends and I would venture horseback into the wilderness areas of Southern Colorado. We hired an outfitter who would use his winter elk hunting camp to humor city slickers like us in the summer. It would take one extra mule just to pack in our beer and other human-comforts. (that would be Southern Comfort, in my drinkin' days.) So, while my buddies were pickin', grinnin', cookin' trout in an iron skillet or just taking siestas....I would do little watercolors like this one. I think I was in my John Singer Sargent period when I painted this...notice the Sargent-like calligraphic shadows on the ground lower left. (yes, John painted brilliant aquarelles!) Notice the "leaning" trees? My question was answered by the natives, that the young trees grew that way from the weight of the winter snows up here on the Continental Divide.  Who woulda knew?

Tiny field study

This little watercolor was done (actual size)...using a Winsor and Newton half-pan field palette. This is a mission church in the Hondo Valley of South-Central New Mexico, along the Rio Hondo.

Easel

A couple of small studies sitting on my easel. I have dragged this old skeleton around the country for many years. Notice the brand burned in the upper right? That is the 7V ranch brand from when I lived in the bunkhouse at the Chimney Creek Ranch in West Texas. That story could fill volumes. I heated the iron in a mesquite fire in the bunkhouse hearth and burned it on the easel for memory's sake. If that easel could talk!?...it might say some things you wouldn't want to hear.