"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Arizona Dreams

Well - back to the Mary Todd Beam book, Celebrate Your Creative Self.  Today I worked with the compositional format "strata."  The source of this painting comes from my memories of Lake Mead with the sun shining on the cliffs and intensifying the browns, oranges and golds in the rocks - contrasting against the blue, blue intensity of Lake Mead.  Although I visited Lake Mead, my first vision of it came as my plane banked over the lake the morning of my arrival as we prepared to land in Las Vegas - the morning sun lighting the cliffs and making the water all that much bluer.  It was stunning!  This painting is done in acrylic and is painted on a chip of mat board 12" x 6".  It is abstract, and from my imagination - we all know that I didn't see cliff dwellers at Hoover Dam!  :)

5 comments:

Christiane Kingsley said...

Barb, your are certainly the greatest advertisement for this book. You are creating such interesting paintings as you are working your way through it.
I love the colors and the composition.

Watercolors by Susan Roper said...

Barb...one of your first strata paintings inspired me, yesterday, to start a Yupo one with that as my format. No drawing, just slopping on the paint and seeing what it lead to. I had such fun and will post the WIP later today.

Who cares whether you saw cliff dwellings for real or not, they are perfect for this scene. Besides,I know for a fact that there are petroglyphs there, so the ancient ones who lived there had to have somewhere to live, didn't they?

Wonderful painting.

Barb Sailor said...

Christiane, it has been really fun and very freeing for me. Each new project is an adventure. Thanks for your positive, encouraging remarks.

Barb Sailor said...

Thanks, Susan...yes - they had to have some place to live! That's my opinion and I am sticking to it! :)
Glad I have inspired you to do a strata painting on YUPO. Would you believe, I almost did mine on YUPO - great minds, ....ya know!

Autumn Leaves said...

Now I am trying my darndest to remember one of the tribes of Arizona that I read about...I think it starts with an 'A'... Anyway, this reminds me of that and it is lovely, Barb!