Blue Sky Gallery

Series
Travels in Tucson, Arizona

Plein Air series painted in Tucson, Arizona.

Spring 2005

Blue Sky, on 'Travels in Tucson'
"In the spring of 2004, we fled Las Vegas seeking the solitude of the desert. We were caught in a snowy blizzard in Flagstaff, Arizona, so we decided to go south to get warm. While huddled in our hotel with the blizzard swirling outside, we located an Adobe house in the Sonoran Desert in the Saguaro National Park and headed on down to Tucson. The Old Tucson movie studio was nearby. At night the coyotes howled in the distance, while something walked heavily across our roof.

"Each morning I would kiss my wife, Lynn, goodbye at the door of the little adobe “Casa Luna” and set out hiking into the vast Sonoran desert, loaded down with back pack, easel, paint-box, and wine. The Saguaro trees stood silently like giants with the wind hissing through their prickly stickers, razor sharp stickers, I quickly found out. Everything was sharp – the Saguaros, the cacti, the bushes, the pebbles were all sharp and seemed to be out to stick me.

"Strangely, the landscape was full of life. There were birds darting here and there, hawks and eagles hovering about, lizards scurrying across the sunbaked earth and bees buzzing about the perfumed blossoms blooming everywhere on the cacti. How there could be so much life in such a dry barren scene was baffling and totally enchanting. I smoked, drank, sang, and painted until the day was done and there was still enough light to find my way home, “bringin’ home the bacon” as Andy Warhol used to say."

- Blue Sky