spirits of the mesas

 

 

spirits of the mesas
by dawn chandler

24" x 18" ~ oil on panel

This painting hangs in my studio, an inspiration to me.

It started as a "traditional" landscape painting, based on a photo a friend had shared with me of a sunrise sky down near Miami, New Mexico. That painting was coming along pretty well, I suppose. It looked like the scene in the photo.

But it was boring.

I left it alone for a while, but it kept gnawing at me, "Do something to me. Do something different. BE BOLD!"

Then on New Year's Eve 2019 I attacked it with a big juicy glob of paint and my palette knife. Moving quickly and intuitively, wielding and scraping away color as I went, I destroyed the boring and transformed it into something altogether different, something so much more interesting and alive to me.

This is the kind of painting that excites me, that feels wholly my own.

Sometime later, a friend visited my studio. She seemed to be almost stopped in her tracks by this painting. She stared at it a long time, her eyes dancing from color to color. "It makes me think of spirits rising from cliff dwellings."

I love that.

This painting isn't for sale; I'm keeping it in my studio to further inspire me — as it does every time I look at it.