#sonoran desert

Imaginary Shelter by Heather Lee Birdsong,2021, gouache on paper, 12.125 x 9 inches.

I began this by painting the architecture in blues, and realized I couldn’t settle on a color for the “figure” (the triangular polygon at the doorway) until the scene visible through the window and doorway was done. I masked off the painted areas, then worked the desert landscape as a whole (with ghost flower, lupine, desert primrose, creosote, and desert willow). I peeled the masking off to see how it was all coming together, and went to sleep with the blank polygonal space glaring.

In the end, I pulled the color of the polygon figure from the farthest mountains. I grew up in an asphalt-covered bowl of desert edged by mountains. When I felt most desperate to escape, someone told me that they could never leave, that they would miss the mountains. The sentiment struck me as absurd — the mountains were far away, an ever-present backdrop and nothing more, their ruddy faces empurpled by the vast amount of atmosphere between us and them. Even though leaving (many years ago now) was the best thing I ever did for myself, I do miss the purple mountains.

This shows a 3 inches square patch, or thereabouts, of a 12 x 9 inch painting in progress. It’s the view out of an imaginary room’s window: desert tree (desert willow?) in the foreground, purple mountains off in the distance, a clear blue sky. The desert is largely an amalgamation of places I remember. The tree is a very specific one — a portrait, perhaps — I photographed on a hike a couple of years ago.

I wound up painting it twice. The first time, the colors were too vivid and dark, and didn’t give that feeling of desert light. So I sponged as much of the gouache away as I could, started again, and wound up with something much better.

Hey nerd, you ain’t lived till ya smoked peyote out of a javelinas taint in the middle of the Senoran desert.

Some concept art for St Vinny

saguarosorceress: