I’ve Been Everywhere: plein air painting in the Grand Canyon

(With apologies to Hank Snow—and everyone else who sang that song)

I’ve been painting and traveling. I faithfully blogged every stop until Thursday, when I got home too late to photograph my latest Grand Canyon paintings. That’s why you’re getting this post a day late. (They’re still lousy pictures, but the weather wasn’t cooperating; see below.)

In the past few weeks, my travels have taken me from Albany, NY, to Phoenix, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and Sun City, AZ. Then back to Albany and on to Rochester to meet my newest grandbaby. From there, it was one more stop in Albany before heading home to Maine.

Plein air painting at the Grand Canyon

This was my third time painting at the Grand Canyon after leaving Sedona. The first time, I went with my Sedona workshop student, Kamillah Ramos. Ed Buonvecchio loaned me a cold-weather sleeping bag and I slept under the stars. That shimmering night sky was transcendentally beautiful.

Since then, I’ve repeated the experience with my friend Laura Martinez-Bianco. This year, Ed joined us, and Hadley Rampton stopped on her way home to Utah. Each trip brings breathtaking sunrise views and the utter chill of high-altitude October nights. Next time, I may bring gloves and long underwear, but I’ll keep going back as long as I can.

The first time one paints the Grand Canyon en plein air, it seems absurdly difficult. The scene is so vast that it can’t be easily sorted. But it grows on you; every year I find myself more capable of slicing and dicing it into manageable bits.

My Grand Canyon paintings survived the trip surprisingly well, despite a makeshift packing job using only cardboard corners and stretch film. (I hadn’t planned on transporting wet canvases.) In fact, the only thing I lost on this trip was my electric toothbrush, and I’m pretty sure I know where that ended up.

Next week I’ll be in Boston at Brigham and Women’s Hospital with my husband—not quite as fun as painting in Sedona, but important. Thankfully, my friend Bobbi Heath is watching my pup and hosting me, so I’ll get to catch up with her between hospital visits.

(If wealth was measured in friends, I’d be a billionaire.)

From Arizona sun to Maine rain

I had a lovely time in Sedona, but checked the weather forecast every day to see if our drought had broken. The National Weather Service was reporting it as ‘severe’ or ‘extreme’ across Maine and New Hampshire. By the time I flew home, it had still not rained.

People don’t associate Maine with forest fire, but it happens. The Great Fires of 1947 destroyed 200,000 acres of forest across Maine and killed 16 people.

So, I was pleased to see drizzle as I set off on my last leg across Massachusetts. It wasn’t doing much by the time I went to bed on Thursday night, but I awoke to the steady thrumming of rain on the roof. By morning, both small creeks along my Beech Hill hike had water in them. They’ve been dry for many, many weeks. Plein air painters may not like rain, but we homeowners are relieved.