Flowering

This is a favorite time of year in the desert. We had just enough rain so that in certain areas, spring flowers are making an appearance. M is so patient with me on walks, since every time I see a flower, I must stop, examine and often photograph it in eight different ways. Even the dog waits for me. He lies down beside me until I am done reveling in the wonder of a single flower.

I am getting excited for Monday, when my online class begins! It's not too late to sign up, if you haven't already. Click here if you would like to know more.

New desert animal paintings are emerging from the studio as the Art Festival near the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor's Center in 29 Palms approaches. I will be part of this outdoor art event April 4,5 & 6th, 2014. You can get more information here. Won't you come out and visit me and the other artists? We'd love to see you. There will be photography, basketry, sculpture and jewelry too!

"Reprise." (desert cottontail) oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches. 

Here's hoping you all have a great weekend!

Hwy. 62 Art Tours

The desert begins to feel more and more like fall every day. Cooler nights, cooler, shorter days. It seems to take FOREVER for the sun to come up in the morning. Somehow, the extra darkness seems to demand more caffeine. I guess I am just a sunshine addict.

The artists of the Morongo Basin all join me in a frenzy of excited preparation for the Hwy. 62 Art Tours. This is our biggest art event of the year, featuring over 100 artists and venues. It takes place the last two weekends of October every year. This is the eleventh year for this event. If you want to find out more about it, visit the website here. I will be having my open studio on the second weekend only, October 27th and 28th from 9 to 5 pm. I love this event, because I get to meet so many wonderful people, and share with them my art. It is so much fun. The art and artists can be enjoyed during the day, and then at night there are other events. If you are thinking of coming out to the desert to visit, there is no better time to come! The weather is usually at its finest in October. (Although I make no promises here. Weather is unpredictable, as we all know.)

Here is just one of my new paintings, especially painted for the Art Tours:

"Bunny Love." Collage, acrylic and oil on board. 10 x 8 inches. ©2012 Karine Swenson

Thursday night

I took my portrait exhibit down from the Joshua Tree library yesterday. There is a new artist showing there now, Vera Topinka. Vera is a talented portrait photographer who mounts her photographs onto metal and combines them with rusted metal and other desert detritus. I highly recommend taking a look at her work if you happen to be in the library in Joshua Tree in the next three months. It is beautiful! Topinka will also be doing the Hwy. 62 Art Tours this year, so you can meet her in person and see even more of her photography then.

I am still focusing on the studio. New paintings! Here is a little bunny, hot of the easel:

"cottontail." collage, acrylic, graphite and oil on board, 9 x 12 inches. ©2012 Karine Swenson

A Fall Return

Hi. It's been over a month since I have written anything, but I am back again. I hope all of you are doing okay. I will try to catch up with all of my fellow bloggers this week, if I can. Sorry for the long silence. Sometimes a person just needs to retreat and re-group. Maybe that's what I was doing.

I recently watched the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" starring Anthony Hopkins. If you have yet to see this movie, I highly recommend it. Especially the part where Hopkins' character (Burt Munro) says to the neighbor boy "If you don't follow your dreams, Thomas, you might as well be a vegetable."

I will be having a giveaway on Wednesday here on the blog, so if you like trying for a chance to get something for free, please check back on Wednesday! (I am not going to spoil the surprise.)

I am gearing up for this year's Hwy. 62 Art Tours. I am going to once again open my studio for the last weekend of October. Walls are being patched and painted. Wires are being put on new paintings. Things are getting framed, dusted and generally cleaned up. I plan to have everything looking sharp! For those of you on my mailing list, some postcards will be sent out in the next week or so. (Some of you have already gotten yours.) This is a once-a-year event, and it is the biggest event for the art community here in the Morongo Basin. I hope you are marking your calendars for October27th and 28th! More about this event will be available in the upcoming weeks, but if you have questions, please feel free to email me.

It is slowly beginning to feel like fall, and today brings a gusty wind. I had forgotten about wind, it's been so calm and hot. It won't be long now before I am dragging out longer sleeves and (ulp!) SOCKS.

What have YOU been doing lately?

Here is a still-wet-and hot-off-the-easel Cottontail painting:

"Tail End." Collage, acrylic and oil on board. 12 x 9 inches. Karine Swenson  ©2012

Animals

Why are we so infatuated with animals? I suppose we see ourselves in them, in a way. We project onto them our own emotions. Sometimes, their struggles become our own. I often ask myself why I like painting animals so much. The answer is fleeting, at best. I know that I am much more interested in painting wild animals than I am in painting domestic animals or pets. I think it's because our encounters with wild animals are so much more fleeting. I want to capture that moment and preserve it. Remember it. How special it seemed. As though, just for one moment, God was looking right at me and saying, "here is a gift." Whatever it is that keeps me painting the creatures of the desert, I know I am not done yet.

My newest painting of the desert cottontail:

"Approaching." Oil on board, 10 x 8 inches. ©Karine M Swenson 2012.

There is no telling if I may one day start painting domesticated animals and pets. I no longer say "I will never..." (I have proved myself wrong, one too many times.) But for now, I will stick to the wild things. Those creatures who come and go at their leisure. I will continue to try to capture those magic moments when I look out the window and see an unexpected visit from one of our tenacious desert creatures.

A few photos of animals in Germany: (these are nearly all domesticated animals.)

This is a "lion's head rabbit." I have never seen anything like it before. So fat, compared to our little desert cottontails.

These rabbits were pets, and they actually had ROLLS, they were so fat.

What animals most inspire you?

Warm Days

This photo was taken last fall, before the cold weather came.  I see this jackrabbit quite often, with its split left ear.

 A few gloriously warm desert days have produced a spring fever that may have no cure.  I watch the birds, who are already planning their nest under the eaves of our house.  They wake me in the morning with their chirping.  I take Mr. Pono outside and play endless games of "fetch."  (I am not sure it can really be called "fetch" with Pono, because he has his own rules about how to play.)  We go for long walks and runs.  Sometimes, we just go outside together, bask in the sunshine, and look at the desert.  Well, I look at the desert; Pono sniffs things and pants.  (For dogs, sniffing is superior to looking.)  I have been dreaming of spring wildflowers and hot summer days.  The inevitable desert wind will soon shatter the haze surrounding me, but for now, I am enjoying every moment.

Don't despair, the lure of the studio is just as irresistible as the warm air outside, and I have been painting.  I am getting new work ready for February.  February 5th is a gallery crawl in downtown Joshua Tree, and I will enjoy the good fortune of having work up in two different galleries that evening!  JTAG will have some exciting new abstract works that are a result of a collaboration between yours truly and Tina Bluefield, a fantastically talented painter and friend.  We have painted 14 paintings together, with each of us working on every painting.  The collaboration has been so fun, and I have learned so much, seeing how another artist works.  I can't wait for these paintings to be hanging on the walls of a gallery.  I will also have some of my paintings of the desert hanging at True World Gallery, including this new cottontail painting: 

"Hot summer's Day."  Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches.  ©k.swenson2011

 

A Giveaway

"Grooming."  Oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches.  ©k.swenson10

No, the above painting is not the giveaway.  It is one of the paintings I sold during the Hwy. 62 Art Tours the weekend before last.

However, I have surpassed 30,000 visitors to this blog, and I am having a giveaway, as promised.  I haven't decided exactly what I am going to give away just YET, but I promise you will be able to choose between more than one thing, and it will be a piece of my art.  I am sure you are wondering how you go about being part of this giveaway.  It's pretty easy.  Just leave me a comment, between now and November 7th.  If you want to share how long you have been following this blog, that would be kinda cool, but it is optional.  I will choose my winner on Monday, the 8th of November.  I will post photos later this week of the items you will be able to choose from, if you happen to be the lucky one.  There will most likely be three things to choose from.  I have already picked one of the things, I just haven't decided on the other two things yet.  (I know - so much suspense!)  

For those of you who are wondering about my recent shows, both the Open Studio Art Tour and the Art in the Park in Ventura were successful shows!!!  I have worked really hard this year, and it is clear to me now that hard work does pay off.  My goal this year was to paint 100 paintings, and as I write this, I have completed 90 paintings.  I have already told some of you about this goal, so I apologize if I sound like a broken record.  I just wanted to tell others about it, because I am so excited that I am going to meet my goal.

I am off to visit my long absent husband next week, and I hope to be blogging about my overseas adventures.  It will depend on internet access, of course, but it will be fun to do a little traveling.  I love sharing adventures with you, my dear blog readers.  I am going to make a concerted effort to catch up on my fellow bloggers this week.  I hope all of you U.S. readers remembered to vote today.  I did.

Jackrabbits and cottontails

Here in the high desert near Joshua Tree, California, we have both cottontail rabbits and black-tailed jackrabbits.  I have done paintings of both species, and have noticed that many people don't know the difference between the two.  If you have spent hours and hours watching them, like Mr. Pono the dog and I have, you can see one of the main differences between them is size.  The jackrabbit (lepus californicus) is a much bigger creature than the desert cottontail (sylvilagus audubonii.)  The black-tailed jack rabbit is in fact a hare, rather than a rabbit.  Both species have large ears, to alert them to the sound of predators and to help cool them in the hot summer months.  However, the jack rabbit's ears are substantially more impressive, in my humble opinion.

The desert cottontail.

Black-Tailed jackrabbit, seen from the side.  Note the longer tail.

The black-tailed jack rabbits do not dig a burrow underground to bear their young.  Rather, the female will find a safe place, often under a shrub or other cover, and give birth to her young, called leverets.  The leverets are born with their eyes open and fully furred.  They are mobile within minutes of birth.  The female jack will then move each leveret to a different location, so that if  a predator discovers the young, it will not get the entire litter.  This is in contrast to the desert cottontail.  The cottontail does dig a nest, lines it with fur from her belly, and gives birth to hairless, blind babies.  (Some of you may recall an earlier post, when Pono dug up a cottontail nest in our front yard.  You can read about that here and here.)

Here they are, side by side.  The cottontail is on the left, jack on the right.

Like their name, the cottontail has a round, white tail that acts as a warning.  When chased by a predator, the  tail of the cottontail goes straight up, alerting other cottontails nearby.  Although the desert cottontail does not live in colonies like its European counterpart, it does tolerate other cottontails nearby more than the jackrabbit will.  The black-tailed jackrabbit has a longer tail that is buff colored underneath and has black stripes on either side.  The black-tailed jack also has black-tipped ears. 

Although I love both the cottontail and the jackrabbit, very much, I must admit a certain partiality to the jackrabbit.  Those ears really GET me, every time I see them.  They are quite a bit more skittish than the cottontails, and they are big enough that every now and then I think I am seeing a coyote, when I glimpse them out of the corner of my eye.  SO COOL.  Or maybe my fondness comes from the fact that I grew up seeing cottontail rabbits, whereas the jackrabbit is a creature that I hadn't seen until moving here, to Joshua Tree.  I guess the jackrabbit just equals the desert, for me.

I leave you with a recent painting of the black-tailed jackrabbit, called Juicy Jack.  This oil painting measures 20 x 16 inches.   This painting is still available.  If you are interested, please email me.

"Juicy Jack."  Oil on canvas, 20x 16 inches.  ©k.swenson2010

I have passed 30,000 visitors to my blog!!!  I actually think I have had more visitors than that, but I didn't start counting until after I had already been blogging for a while.  I am pretty excited about it, and I am planning a giveaway next week.  Be sure to stay tuned for it!  Have a great weekend, everyone!