Valley Fare

"Morning Light on Waterman"

12X16" oil on mounted canvas - SOLD

© Bruce A. Morrison
(click on image for a larger view)

Its not winter here yet...which is unusual for this time of year.  Well, it was 5 degrees above zero (Fahrenheit) when I started this morning, and the trees had a neat little coating of ice glistening in the morning sun - but still no snow.  This is somewhat unusual for here...yesterday I was reading a report about how our area is experiencing its second driest season on record.  Yesterday's ice was the result of about .01" of wind driven mist...that's about as good as the moisture "machine" can do around here right now.

But I've been working on warmer themes in the studio anyway, no matter what it decides to do in the valley outside.  This was a piece I've been working on for some time and depicts the Waterman Creek below us as it flows just south of here.  The morning I was there experiencing this actual scene, it was still and pleasant with the morning sun burning through the trees, trying to awaken the sleeping stream still tucked away in dawn's shadow.

Portraying an image like this is very subjective...how can one be "objective" about an emotional/personal experience such as this?!  There is some symbolism here and it is personal for me...I do that sometimes but do not usually talk about it; I want the art work to stand on its own and for others to have their own experience within it.  I have said it before - I do like an image I can drift through; I think I have given the opportunity here.

Thanksgiving is coming up very soon!  I'm supporting Small Business Saturday this year, instead of Black Friday!  As a small business, I provide things that cannot be found on typical Black Friday fare.  But I want to put a call out there for all artists - studios and galleries...we do what we can to provide beauty and substance to the world out there.  Support your local artists and galleries! 

Happy Thanksgiving out there next week!!!

Got the Blues...

Great Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)

color pencil drawing -  © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

My mother's favorite color was blue.  I remember all the things she decorated with; many things throughout the house favored blue. I think of her during the year when the few blue flowers of the prairie bloom.  In the spring it's Blue-eyed Grass, in the late summer its some of the asters, (like Sky Blue Aster)...in the early fall, for me its Great Lobelia!

I came across a large group of Great Lobelia this past September on a hillside seepage.  I took several photographs of the plants but none seemed to do them justice, like I feel they need...so I decided to make it a fall project to do a small color pencil of them instead.  I should probably title this piece something like "Great Lobelia Blues".

I've not had success getting this wildflower to grow in our pasture because we're fairly gravely here, and this flower really favors a wet location.  Now I have a small bouquet of them "growing" in a frame in my studio...a nice way to remember my mother, and a late September morning on the prairie.