Finished

Desert Gems

Original Oil painting

26" X 44"

Thanks for following this piece. It was fun to work with such a unique landscape.

MANITOBA TRIP

I just returned from 2 remote camps in northern Manitoba. A big thank you to Doug and Helen Webber who made this possible.

Helen, Doug, Me, my husband Jim

 Accessible by float plane, we were surrounded by wilderness and the timing coincided to watch the tundra put on her fall colors. Snow joined us both on the tundra and at the second camp in the boreal forest.

We saw lots of the creatures which inhabit this northern clime: polar bears, arctic fox, peregrine falcon, hudsonian godwits, eagles, caribou, moose, snow geese, sandhill cranes, tundra swans, and we had some surprises. 

How about witnessing a hawk take a snow goose out of the air, or a mink by the water's edge looking for northern pike fish scraps after an afternoon of fishing? A spruce grouse (in a spruce tree of course) and a Harris's sparrow were my first sightings of these birds. Barely feeling the below freezing temperatures, we marveled at the displays of northern lights.

Wonderful trip with lots of great memories! 

The Foreground

With the foreground blocked in, I can start on the gemsbok.

More tree

I have moved between the tree and its shadow, refining one, modifying the other, until they work together.

The tree

This is one complicated tree. With my shadow painted, I am in essence backward engineering the tree.

Life

While the dead tree is cool and feels all desert-y, I wanted to include some of the living greenery which is found among these dunes. Each tree is an oasis of life, filled with chattering birds and offering shelter and green morsels for large herbivores.