About the artwork

Ancient Roots is part of my Southwestern Landscapes series. The series embellishes on the visually abstract nature of primordial terrains: the forms of the rocks, rivers, and bushes, the unparalleled palettes, and the various surfaces, from scruffy to lush, craggy to velvety, gushing to billowy.   The subject matter naturally lends itself to being expressed via contemporary abstract art techniques of color, geometry, texture, shape, line, form, and pattern. As the old can look new to the discerning eye, the series easily falls under the umbrella theme of my works, Ancient is Modern, Modern is Ancient. Although my Ancient Roots rendition of this canyon in Tent Rocks National Monument in Cochiti, New Mexico, is more representational, I drew from abstract language techniques of color and texture to ratchet up the whimsical tone already inherent in the amusing tent-shaped peaks and exposed octopus-like roots of the Ponderosa pine.  To breathe playful life into a largely monochromatic prehistoric site, I deepened the rose, salmon, blue, and terra cotta colors of the rocks along the path and of the striations of the rock faces.  I even added new colors of greens, purples, and grays.  I decided to dust the foreground rocks with real sand after a gust of wind tossed the wet canvas face down on the ground during one plein-air painting session.  Small pebbles from the on-site path were glued onto a rock face to affect true, three-dimensional depth of a millions-year-old sedimentary rock layer in the foreground.  This mixed media treatment contrasts starkly against the three-dimensional illusion created with the series of precipitous rock walls stretching into the distance toward a hazy vanishing point.