For earlier paintings, click on these years: 2003 2004 2005-6 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011.
Click on each small image to bring up a larger version. The originals measure 12 x 19 inches (painted area).
The photographs are made with a hand-held camera, and often require straightening and cropping for images that accurately represent the original paintings. I also make simple adjustments of intensity, contrast, saturation and warmth, so that on my monitor the colors resemble the origina paintings to the extent possible. Hopefully they will also be somewhat accurate on your monitor. As for printed copy, nothing whatever can be guaranteed! Beyond these simple corrections, the photos are not retouched.
Under these conditions the new challenges for me are to show the changed surface appearance, and along the way to suggest more underwater rockiness.
First, a rapid that I have painted several times. (Foot of ramp from the "Living Room" art installation in the river park.) Click to see its appearance in 2011, with medium high water, and in 2011, with very high water. A large boulder that is exposed in 2012 (far side of river) was completely submerged in the high-water view. One can try to figure out correspondences between rocks in the 2012 picture and waves in the 2011 pictures. This painting was plein-air except for far-shore rocks and foliage.
(For some further paintings of this rapid, see 2009 or 2009 or 2010 .)
Upstream a couple of hundred yards, the next two paintings are of a rapid that I ignored before, because it was so tame -- smooth with little or no white water. This year the lower water level gave it a narrower channel, more white water and some interesting contours. I heard a few rafts and kayaks scrape as they went over it. First painting plein-air except for far shore; second painting completely plein-air except for minor touch-up back in Boulder.
For the next rapid (two paintings), I sat in a spot that had been under water in previous years. Click here to see the same spot of river a year ago, from a higher vantage point, maybe twenty yards downstream. Hard to believe it's really the same spot. This year the channel is much narrower, and I have narrowed my focus accordingly. Also this year many more large rocks are fully exposed.
The first is a quick gesture painting done on location; the second was done more slowly and finished in the studio.
Over the years I have made many portraits of the river in evening glow as seen from a high bank to the west. See 2011 and 2011.
Here is one for this year. Reduced flow is constricted to a narrower channel. The deep green part has good flow, but it is narrower than other years. I actually swam in this spot -- it is over my head -- but I did not stay in the water long.
Finally one painting of the tributary Cottonwood Creek, which comes down from Cottonwood Pass and the slopes of Mounts Princeton and Yale. The next scene is from where the creek meets the Colorado Trail at about 9,000 feet. Here we are looking upstream from a small island in the creek. (The bridge for the Colorado Trail is just out of sight upstream.) Mostly plein-air, with some foliage completed at home.
For almost the same view four years ago, see 2008. Back then, there was a beaver dam keeping the water higher and slower, and the creek bottom was all sand of a light color; hence the light appearance back then. The dam was breached in spring of 2010, and the increased flow washed all the sand downstream. For a painting done last year, see 2011. (Sand gone but higher water than this year.)
