Author: Merilee

Floral Friday – Painting Roses

/ Merilee / 2 Comments

 

This past March was the hottest that I can remember.  It was as if Autumn went directly back into Summer and skipped both Winter and Spring.  Temperatures in the high 80’s and 90’s, even 100 in some places.  It didn’t just nudge my garden, it shoved it into high gear, sending leaves out on trees that don’t normally leaf out until late April, and my wisteria shot into full bloom a good three weeks before it should have. This also included my roses.  I don’t get my first rose bloom until April, like clockwork.  This year I had my first rose in early March.

So one day after finishing a painting of the desert, which is what I’m normally doing, I decided to paint some roses before they burned up in the heat.  This then led me down a path of “I want to paint roses”.  There is something satisfying about painting roses, especially if you can grasp the complexity in as simple a manner as possible.  That is not easy.

Pink Roses

Oil on canvas

18″ x 24″

SOLD

 

The Blue Mountain

/ Merilee

There is a mountain in the desert right on the edge of Death Valley that I like to stare at.  It’s always blue.  Whether it’s sunny or raining, dawn, dusk or when sand is blowing, it’s some shade of blue.  Usually cerulean blue.  I like it’s shape.  I call it The Blue Mountain.  It’s like my friend.

The Blue Mountain

Oil on board

12″ x 24″

Desert Moonset with Headlights

/ Merilee / 4 Comments

When I go to the desert, there are many things that I see over and over and over again.  They are views that are like family.  Sometimes when I see these things I think, “One day I’ll paint that.”, even though I immediately tell myself that’s just dumb.

“Why would you paint that?  How could you even begin to paint that?  No one will understand why you chose to do it, so why?”  But I keep looking at it thinking how beautiful it is.  And how that particular view gives me an odd sense of comfort.

When I go to Tecopa, which is where I stay when I go to Death Valley, I always stay in the exact same room.  It’s my room.  My home-away-from-home.  I get up very early in the morning, usually around 4:00.  I go outside to look at the sky to see the Milky Way and the stars while coffee is brewing in the little coffee maker I take with me.  When I look to the west, I always see the headlights or taillights of a car or a truck driving up or down Highway 127.  I like seeing the headlights appear and disappear as the vehicle drives behind the mud hills that line the road as it goes through this portion of the Amargosa Basin, on it’s way to the tiny town of Shoshone.  If the wind is just right, I sometimes can hear the engine of the car and I always wonder, where the heck are you going at 4am???  It’s four o’clock in the morning.  Where are you going?  But they are always there, no matter what time it is.  The headlights. They are like friends.

A couple of days ago, something inside me said, “It’s time.  It’s time to paint the headlights.”  So, armed with a few terrible, blurry,  half-assed iPhone pictures and my mind and memories equipped with feelings and visions from probably close to 15 years of seeing this every time I go to my room in the desert, I decided to paint it.  For Valentine’s Day.  It’s something that is close to my heart.

Oil on canvas

20″ x 24″

Tecopa, California