Monsoon Green

Saguaro Monsoon, acrylic on paper, 15”x14”

Tucson Monsoon Green Collagescape, mixed media on board, 8”x10”

After my recent Southwest art adventure, it’s time to start making some art to reflect the road trip.  As a Californian I don’t always think about green being the color of the desert – especially as we’re in the middle of a drought.  But then I arrived in a hot and humid Tucson just as thunderstorms moved in, I experienced monsoon weather in the Southwest – they have had a wet year in Arizona and New Mexico and the desert is green.  I am also thinking back to the work of the Tucson artist Rose Cabat I saw for the first time in Tucson – the glowing shades of green on her ceramics are starting to make even more sense to me as I look closer at Tucson Green.

I have started some Tucson work with both a landscape and a collagescape.  More desert-inspired work to come….

Greener than Green

Columbia Gorge Collagescape, mixed media on board, 12”x12”

It seems every time a friend returns from a visit to Washington or Oregon they always pretty much say the same thing, “It’s so green up there.”  Up in the Pacific Northwest they seem to take the green for granted – well at least west of the Cascades.  And you know, it really is green up there.  Even California’s wettest winters and greenest springs are different from the green up north.  The dense lush grass on every roadside, the skies that quickly go from blue to lead gray, the muted light – it is striking how a place that is not that far away can be so different.

I wanted to capture some of that green for the Collagescape Series.  I chose one of my favorite places in the Pacific Northwest — the Columbia River Gorge just east of Portland.  It’s one of those over-the-top landscapes that the Western United States does so well.  But unlike the arid West, up north it’s green, so many shades of green with occasional break of a tall, narrow waterfall and the blue flow of the river itself.

This is another work to be included in my Collagescape show opening in August.  In the meantime, prints and additional items with this image are also available from Society 6.  

Green Art

Green, mixed media on board, 12”x16”

I can’t do a series of beer-themed art without a green piece, even if I did not reuse green beer bottles.  I did repurpose a lot of the green packaging including cases and six-pack containers.  This piece is both green for recycling and green as in the many, many bottles.

Green will be included in my upcoming exhibit at San Francisco’s City Beer in October.