On Vacation!
We’re off today to commune with nature for a week! We were originally going to visit Yellowstone, but opted to stay in state. We’re going to spend our first night camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, then will head to Steamboat Springs, the western slope to hit the Olathe Corn Festival, down to Montrose and the Black Canyon, Telluride, Ouray, Silverton, Durango, Alamosa and the Sand Dunes, back up through Salida then home. We might have to edit some of the itinerary but will play it by ear. We also plan to squeeze in a few ghost towns along the way of which my daughter is quite leary. Most of these are abandoned mining camps from the 1800’s.
We like to stay in small off the wall camp grounds and even sometimes dispersed camping which is basically off road camping on national forest land. The only down side to dispersed camping is that there are NO facilities.
On another note, I’m taking some of the advice from the poll from Saturday. I’m going to continue painting my mini works, but I am also going to get my clay studio up and running. I’m going to research some grants and other funding through the small business administration and really push the economic impacts of the “creative community”. I have some ideas for new work both functional and sculptural that I’m going to sketch out during our trip. It will be good to be away from TV, the computer and other outside forces.
I’ve been reading a book about Francis Bacon who is considered to be one of the last great figurative painters and decided to take a look at some of mine from the archives. One of my painting instructors in college, Richard Lethem, is an amazing and prolific artist who has also painted a number of figurative works. I was privaleged to be his intern in my senior year and helped him catalogue his works from the 1970’s-early ’80s. Since I’m in a nostalgic mood, I decided to share one of my paintings that I completed from an advanced painting class I took with Richard. Oil on canvas, 24″ x 18″, 2003.
I’ll see you next week!
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:58 am
Wow Cyn your painting looks wonderful and thanks for sharing with us. It sounds like you are in for an adventure this week I hope youall have a fantastic camping trip. I would love to see some of the ghost towns. I hope you get lots of photos to share with us! Have fun!
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Hope you have a super time. Look forward to seeing some pics maybe. How wonderful to have been an intern for Richard Lethem. I like the painting you did, the pose, the colours, has a great mood to it. I have read the Francis Bacon book and have the bbc interview of him on dvd. Very interesting, and one of my absolute FAVOURITE artists.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Thanks Lyn and JB! I tried to upload more photos, but 5 seems to be bloggers limit.
Yes, interning with Richard Lethem was a great experience. He’s a fascinating person and an incredible artist.
I am finding Francis Bacon to be an interesting person…I still don’t know how I feel about his paintings though. Some of them are very disturbing to me. But, that could be their success too, to make people think and dig down into their psyche.