What Moves an Artist to Paint?
Re-Creating the Desert on Canvas
I’d started along a familiar trail in the Anza Borrego Desert CA, and as always, I had my eye out for that unique element in nature that would inspire me to paint. Approaching the path in the warming sun, I rounded a bend and saw the many sprinklings of flowering desert plants that dotted the ground like confetti. The beauty stopped me in my tracks. I’d been to the desert many times, but had never seen so many flowers blooming all at once.
As I looked closer, I was impressed by the ocotillo, with its’ tall, spiny columns adorned with tassels of brilliant red. There were a variety of succulents and cacti that were topped with dashes of color. Standing amidst the colorful landscape my eyes rested upon this particular grouping of cactus, so full of open, pink blossoms that it reminded me of a bouquet of flowers.
These beckoning blossoms created such a beautiful sight that I knew I had to paint them. I asked my photographer husband to ‘take a few photos’ (what amounted to a full photo shoot). Later, armed with a portfolio of photos, I was excited to get going and bring them to life on canvas.
My artistic style falls into the category of painting called realism, meaning that I paint detailed work where my subjects look a lot like a photograph. What makes my work unique is that I add touches of surrealism. For me that means I add certain elements to the painting that weren’t there in real life.
With the Springtime Succulence painting, I carefully recreated the cactus, hand scaling its’ trademark funky shapes. Then, with my brushes I painted a base coat of green oxide for the pads, finally adding shading and highlights several times. I paint in oils so this is a slow process, as I need to allow the paint to dry between each layer. I then added the spines. In order to make them look real I took a razor knife loaded with paint and sliced the color on, then came back and added the shadow at the base of each spine – this was a time intensive process, with about 20 spines on each of the sixteen pads! Not a problem though, as I enjoy the details. Of course, the finishing touch was to create the pink blossoms. I painted about 9 layers of white, pink and crimson to capture the nuances of the flower.
With the cactus complete, I moved onto the ground, where I added the barrel cactus and the cholla. Neither of these were in the original photos, but they were scattered around the landscape and I felt like they’d add an element of perspective for the prickly pear. The cholla’s tiny, collective spines glistened a golden-white from the afternoon sun, and it took several tries to get the feel just right in the painting’s foreground.
The last element I decided to add was the Cactus Wren, who also wasn’t in the photo either. I put him in because I’m intrigued by how these birds create several homes in such a spiny space. I’m told that several of the nests add as decoys against potential predators. I can picture him clenching numerous twigs in his beak and carefully placing one after another into a crevasse between the pads. As I carefully painted the details of his feathers, beak and eyes, I reflected on the patience it must take for him to do his job, too.
With the wren perched proudly on the pad, I added finishing touches such as filling in the earth, adding in some strewn twigs, rocks and a few fallen pieces of cholla. I’ve always found it interesting that you see broken fragments of cactus littering the earth at the base of a living one, as this is how they reproduce. Finally, I painted my signature beetle onto the rock in the foreground of the painting. All in all it takes me about 100 hours to complete one painting like this.
It’s my hope that my Western Trails Fine Art Collection inspires viewers to keep the adventure in their lives, and also to look at the elements in nature like this cactus closely, so they can see a hint of the greater ecosystem in which they live. By understanding of the interdependence within these elements of nature, we appreciate our own relationship to it, remembering to not only celebrate its’ beauty but to support its’ preservation through our awareness.