Third Abiquiu Painting

I may have one or two more in me, but further paintings of my visit to New Mexico will have to wait for a bit. I am back in the pottery studio making stuff for upcoming art fairs for the holiday season, and prepping for my gallery’s annual juried show, which is one of the biggest in Washington State.
Also, I’m teaching a college course this quarter, “Art for Teachers”, which may very well be my last time doing it. I am incredibly frustrated by the students lack of willingness to make the slightest bit of effort. It’s just been getting worse and worse over the last few years- the isolation of COVID did not help things along.
I have an extra credit assignment written inside of my syllabus. It appears toward the end. The assignment is simple. I say that any student who sends me a picture of a specific animal (I change it every quarter- this time it was a quokka) will receive extra credit!
All students are required to submit a written statement saying they have read the syllabus and understand its contents.
Out of 26 students, all of whom signed their names to a statement saying they had done so, I can only verify that 2 actually read the whole thing, because I got pictures of quokkas from 2 of the students.
It’s gotten worse from there, but I won’t bore you with the details.
That’s my rant on the current state of college education from my viewpoint.

Back to the image. This one is called “Ghost Ranch Window”. It’s 24″ x 24″, oil on canvas. The edges, just like the first painting (Georgia’s Ladder), are 2″ wide, and I continued the painting over all the edges so it doesn’t require a frame.

Ghost Ranch was Georgia O’Keeffe’s other New Mexico property in Abuquiu, about 13 miles North of her home and studio. It’s currently a place where visitors can spend a day or a week camping and hiking the trails, seeing a little paleontology museum (there are lots of dinosaur fossils in that area) or attending week-long art courses and other events. Some of the original buildings remain; this was one of them. It may have been O’Keeffe’s little house; I don’t remember for sure now. It’s currently not open to the public, but I loved seeing the outside of it, especially the contrast between the warm orange tones and soft edges of the adobe structure and the sharp turquoise of the window frames.
This is a feature of adobe structures all over New Mexico. The blues on doors and windows emulate the bright cloudless New Mexico sky. It can be absolutely scintillating!