Category Archives: gravel roads

Front Range Rhythms

There’s something so elegant about the contours of unaltered landscape; the undulations, carvings, upthrusts and foldings. This landscape has all of those as the mountains rear themselves up from the flat bed of the plains, each segment carrying it’s very own eco system and micro-climate. How dare we ever think we can “improve” on any of that. 

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Side Trip 2

The little landscape I did a couple of days ago for this blog has continued to haunt me.  I kept thinking about it…the rhythm of the strips of yellow trees and undulating hills kept rolling through my head. I wanted to paint it again in a looser more impressionisitic way. So this time I didn’t do a drawing and I only allowed myself a flat brush, and I tried to do the minimum of layering.  Turns out it looks pretty much like the first one!  No matter what I do, I seem to do what I do!!

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Side Trip

Last week my parents came to stay, and since my dad grew up in the Cypress Hills, he loves to go for a drive out there.  So we did, and it was a golden fall day with the exquisite clear light we’re so blessed with in October (if it’s not snowing!!)
We took a side trip across from north of Elkwater, east to Eagle Butte  on our way home, and there was one stunning hillside after another.  This was one of them. Good thing we went when we did; it looks quite different this week!

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Sundown Barn

No painting for you today…too many projects happening and not enough time!  it felt really weird not to paint…or even DRAW today!  Instead lots of computer time, which I swear rots my brain!  
This photo is from my latest cross-country road trip…that gravel road I’d never taken before, which heads straight east at Rolling Hills and winds up in the middle of nowhere.  I love it.  And Look at the beautiful barn I found.  Remember this story next time you want to take the pavement instead of the gravel!

The Long View @ Longview

If you’ve never been down the Cowboy Trail, this won’t look familiar. This is the iconic Alberta scene that one sees over and over in our ads and promos of the province.  Prairie gives way to foothills, which rise up to towering Rockies. Nowhere is this transition more dramatic than at the aptly named “Longview”.  Just north of that little town there is this incredible depth-of-field which defies pen and paint, but I had to try anyway.  Those who haven’t been there, it’s time for a road trip!

f you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Chain Lakes

This weekend was a celebration with my classmates of our graduation from nursing school many years ago (not saying how many!) We met in Banff and had 3 days of catching up and enjoying the last days of September in one of the most beautiful towns anywhere in the world.  I always like to check out the back roads, so today I took “The Cowboy Trail” from Turner Valley to Chain Lakes and then cut across country to home, gathering fabulous visuals and visits with even more friends. It took all day, so no painting….  Instead, this photo, taken about 25 miles west of Nanton,  of Chain Lakes and the Porcupine Hills stretching up to the Rockies.

Sweetgrass Pronghorn

Well I missed a day because of……a road trip!  And now, rather than a painting, you get a photo.  I took this a couple of hours ago, just north of the American border, on my way back from seeing the Charlie Russell watercolours at the CMRussell museum in Great Falls.  Wow, what a show, and  a nice little getaway! There’s nothing like a trip (even a short one) for priming the artistic pump and cranking up the enthusiasm for life.

Delphiniums @ Echodale

Echodale Farm  was my location of choice yesterday, and the flowers were in all their glory; there were even some delphiniums still in bloom.  I loved how the light hit them and lit them up against the dark foliage background.  Again, I tried to paint them much wetter and more directly, with no layering or glazing. It’s fun, but I’m not getting the lost edges I want,   so I’ll keep trying. 

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Echodale Farmhouse

I’ve been trying to get to Echodale all summer, and finally made it today. AFTER all the animals are gone, and there’s no-one baking bread in the kitchen or hammering out horse shoes in the blacksmith shop! Darn it anyhow. 
 It was very beautiful though, and quiet.  I was able to sit and do a little sketchy painting of the old log house and enjoy the absolutely perfect weather.  I wandered about and enjoyed the flowers and the sight and sound of the S. Saskatchewan River sliding by. Hope you all enjoyed your Labour Day weekend as much as I did. 

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.

Flowers & Pickles

 If you grew up in a rural environment and in my generation, then you know what August was all about! We would can and freeze, butcher,  harvest and pickle every garden and farm product we had on the place! Amongst all that we’d be making meals for our sizable family plus the haying crew or the combiners, depending on the year, along with whoever else showed up.  By the end of those summer days (some times around midnight) we’d  swear we never wanted to cook another meal, or wash another dish!
 No wonder I can’t let summer go by without making a few pickles at the very least. I did a dozen jars of dills last evening,(I was finished long before midnight) and this was the still life I “found” on my cupboard this morning.  

If you’d like to own this original watercolour, email Gena with your bid today! gena03@telusplanet.net Minimum bid $100 (plus gst and shipping). First bid, or highest bid wins the painting.