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We were somewhere in North Carolina, on top of the Ridge, waves of mountains vanishing in the far away mist.

We were somewhere in North Carolina, on top of the Ridge, waves of mountains vanishing in the far away mist.

I’m inspired by the austerity of the road and bridge against the sky.

It’s almost cold, leaves clatter in the wind, it’s the season of the witch.

This is a long view of a Stockholm Avenue, bordered by buildings built in the mid to late 19th c. The city is planned to have wide transit corridors that direct train, car, bike, scooter and pedestrian traffic all along the same path, accommodating each mode safely in parallel. The result is lots of wide urban space without buildings encroaching on it and a sense of openness in what is, in fact, an overall densly built environment. There’s an abundance of trees and flowers in these spaces. Lovely.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/valhallawagen-se/1062388

Ted and Jean slept here.
Nice place, I could stay another couple weeks but…
We check out tomorrow.

Florida. Here we are for the week while Ted works. It’s quite different than the the places I call home in the northeast mid and south west. Different flora and fauna, lots of water everywhere and not all that walkable. Skyscrapers ans doublewides dominate the cities. Mosquitos and seabirds are all over the grasslands and it always sunny and warm. Florida.

Victor Colorado has and annual Plein Air event. I painted there for over a week last summer. Victor is a gold mining town and has been since the 19th century. There’s mine pits and mine heads all over town, lots to paint.

We’re driving on a Saturday afternoon and it’s starting to snow. It’s winter in New York, scrub trees in the field mowed last fall are a silhouetted filigree against the leaden horizon. It’s not the sort of scene to leave the car to admire. The wind starts to gust.

In late winter we took a drive to the east of our city, Troy. Here the austerity of the hills frozen and neutral, the cold, cold sky draped with clouds pushing northeast, all of this struck me as a beauty specific to Upstate. This landscape is worthy of painting in every season, late winter being no exception.

Our storage unit is located in Clums Corners, a small farm community outside Troy, NY. Our unit has a sweeping view to the east. Late in the afternoon when the sun is flat, the colors of the sky and land saturate and you can see all the way to Massachusetts. The land is still undeveloped by tract housing and commercial pad sites, still used for farming as it has been for centuries. The place is haunted by early American history, an unsung national treasure.

The setting for this painting is of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. The time of year is winter. I hike a lot when I’m here and was surprised when I saw the Ocatillo I’ve featured in this painting. The cactus was all leafed out and bushy which I don’t remember happening at this elevation til 4-6 weeks later in the growing season. Nonetheless, I admire this species and have painted it before. I’ve included a painting I posted a few years ago to illustrate how intricate and downright lovely it is when its leaves emerge. Hope you like it.

Marble Canyon is a dusty, hot and out of the way spot where colors of the earth and sky are vivid. The Colorado River is winding it’s way southwest to the Grand Canyon. The United States’ largest birds, California Condors, nest on the canyon ledges, float on the thermals and fish the waters far below. Life is good.

This is a small, quick painting requested by my sister. It’s located in central Wisconsin, USA.

The white bass are still biting at Lake Pleasant in Maricopa County, AZ. This is a view of the embankment at the lake shore. Ted’s doing the fishing, I take pictures, pic up fistfuls of discarded fishing line and look for lost Rolex’s on the beach.

Plein aire while Ted, Kirk and Tyler fished.

A hot day, a steep climb, another place in the world I’d never seen before. Wonderful.

This scene is from the end of a fishing trip. No fish but nice winter sunset.

This is an end-of-day scene looking east. We’d been fishing down in the Salt River, fish weren’t biting, the sun’s sinking and it’s getting cold on the desert. Nothing left to do but walk back to the car and start the hour’s drive home.

It’s difficult to travel more than a few block in Sun City, Maricopa County, Arizona, before encountering a golf course. I don’t play and they’re closed to all but paying customers. They’ve remained a huge mystery to me for the more than 60 years that I’ve been a visitor to this specialized City. The golf paths wind through lush, shaded and watered landscapes that disappear in the far distance, forbidden to non-golfing mortals such as I so I’m very curious as to what lies beyond. Nonetheless, the courses are lovely and I don’t begrudge those who are to allowed to amble the greens from dawn to dusk. After dark the greens belong to coyotes, the rabbits they hunt and the birds who roost til morning. This is the order such and the way it shall be.