By the way, while traveling this summer, I embarked on a more aggressive approach to drawing. While still using practiced observation skills (see my earlier posts on drawing technique), I decided to loosen up a bit and step on the gas, so to speak. I plan to stay on this same road for a while now that I'm back home, with some quick sketchy figure paintings in oil as well. My usual modus operandi is to immerse myself in a long voyage of fine detail when I begin a piece (whether it be in pen & ink or oil, or other media). You can see this by taking a gander at some of my ink drawings at goodrichink.com or simply check out the example below:
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| The Girls Are Not Amused (click on title to see larger version) |
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| Dad (click on title to see larger version) |
Perhaps you will see samples of these "sketchier" paintings on a future post. Here's one of the quick sketches from which a painting is in progress:
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| girl on couch with laptop |
But back to my subject - Travel. As art. I am going to get more sketchy here, because I fear that this literary vehicle might get bogged down into mud if I drive in too much detail.
Did you notice the many cleverly inserted, and very subtle, travel metaphors in that last bit about drawing? (I count seven)
Art is travel.
Travel is art.
As in the previous post, the artistic subjects here are primarily landscape and portraiture. Off we go.....
After the Badlands of South Dakota, our little Prius with four passengers continued west and hit Rapid City. And here the Black Hills rise out of the prairie. Anyone who has studied Native American history knows the significance of these hills to the people who lived in this region before the new Americans of European descent flocked here (to search for gold and break treaties to do so).
So, with some mixed feelings, I have to say how impressive Mount Rushmore is, looking up from below it. I had visited it as a child, but my memory of it may come more from the many images seen of it since. I have stood before real Van Gogh paintings in Amsterdam, and, like Rushmore, a photo reproduction does not match the experience of seeing the work in person. Down the road from there is the Crazy Horse Monument. Having committed to no government funding (it relies on visitor fees, private donations and revenues from sales at the gift shop), the progress on the mountain is slow going. In fact, one might conclude that it hasn't changed in appearance over several years. Nonetheless, it is worth seeing, especially in combination with the museum and other facilities at the site. When complete, it will depict Crazy Horse on horseback pointing to his lands. As for its scale, the four figures on Mount Rushmore will fit into the head of Crazy Horse.
These giant stone portraits make me think of other living portraits seen along the way:
Dekalb, Illinois. We rest from long ride at a farm house oasis - there, my uncle and aunt, cousins and their children (and a couple of their childrens' boyfriends), barbecued chicken in the back yard, dog under the tree. Family.
Several days later in north Yellowstone National Park. My brother-in-law Joe waits for us at Mammoth Springs. We are late to the rendezvous because Old Faithful wasn't faithful to the ranger's calculation, and it made us wait longer than expected. If Joe is annoyed by the delay, he keeps it to himself. Family.
He has reserved a site for us at Pebble Creek, a river valley feeding into the spectacular Lamar Valley, home of thousands of bison, elk, bears, wolves. He has a large pole tent that we set up, cots for sleeping. Then we go to watch wildlife. He is our guide. He is passionate about wilderness and the wildlife in it. He introduces us to bear spray. We see and spend time in a part of Yellowstone that we wouldn't have considered visiting. Expansive meadows meeting mountains, gravely river running through it. Thank you, Joe. After two nights tenting, we caravan to Helena, Montana.
East Helena, Montana. Another family portrait. Lisa's Cousin Lucy has organized a gathering, a potluck family reunion in the hall of the local fire department. Here, we converge with many members of Lisa's family, some living locally, others having traveled from Washington State, Oregon, and Arizona just to be with us Easterners. Great food, company and music. One distant cousin was a professional accordion player who was home from the road. We enjoyed and danced to a variety of music. Yours truly pretends to polka with cousin Lucy.
And now, a quick look at some more landscapes - we'll step back in time to where we found ourselves heading out of the Black Hills of South Dakota. From there, our trip took us across Wyoming - flat, flat, flat for a long way. But the skies showed thunderstorms coming from the west, and the three hundred and sixty degree view of cloudscape was magnificent.
We stopped in Dubois, in western Wyoming, where the land becomes rugged with red cliffs, and then continued straight to the Tetons.
The Teton Mountains which rise up so abruptly do so for good reason (here comes the geologist in me). It marks a normal block fault (up and down, rather than sideways). The block that dropped down is what you drive across as you aim for the mountains, and the uplifted block is what you see in front of you - a wall of jagged peaks covered in snow. The mountains are so jagged and picturesque because they are young, and because the uplift rate has far exceeded the rate of erosion. We can imagine horrific earthquakes during the 14th century CE (or AD) as these blocks made jumps of several feet in a second. Perusing my John McPhee, Annals of a Former World, I read that the Jackson Hole valley was sinking in part because underlying magmas were being drawn northward to Yellowstone. As the valley dropped, it carried five foot-diameter spruce trees down with it, now standing at the bottom of Jenny Lake. Apparently not enough oxygen down there to return them to the earth over the last 600 years.
We turned right and parallel to that wall of rock to enter Yellowstone Park. Taking in the volcanic activity along the way, we continued north to our campsite. In addition to introducing us to the local fauna, Lisa's brother Joe had us drive up Beartooth pass out of the northeast entrance to the park. 11,000 feet in elevation, unimaginable beauty, the mountains on all sides, the plunging valleys, the alpine meadows, and a snowball fight in August. Sibling tension after Joe hits his sister in the face with a cold one. Family.
And now it is time to wind this tale down because I am tired of watching myself type. It was a beautiful drive from Yellowstone to Helena - a geologist's dream. In Helena, family gatherings, a high school reunion, cousins splashing together in a hotel pool, more visiting, eating at The Parrot and bagging some of their famous chocolate, seeing the city's excellent history museum, staying with relatives, and then the drive home. This punctuated by a stop outside of Chicago at my cousins' house, and then at my family's cabin and woods western New York. Where Django our dog seemed to barely recognize us, as he had fallen in love with, and loyalty to, his grandmother. But time heals all grievances and he is my shadow again, expecting me to rise up early in the morning to feed him. The long return drive across New York State into Vermont ended with bedtime arrival, and back to work the next morning.
And now, I have a painting to work on.
The artist's voyage is never over.
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