Sequoia Riverlands Paint-Out
Battle Mountain Ranch, 12″ x 12″, Oil on panel, © Eric Merrell
I’ve just recently returned from painting in the beautiful foothills on the western side of the Sierras, just outside of Visalia. A few locations including a working ranch were made available to a small group of artists for the week. The flowers are pretty spectacular right now; fiddlenecks, poppies, lupine, “popcorn” flowers and others. The drive to get to the locations took about an hour from my campsite at Lake Kaweah, sometimes a little more, as they were pretty far removed from the main roads. But the drive was amazing – like old postcards of California you can find in antique stores – cows grazing in a field of flowers, foothills and the Sierras in the distance. Some of the other artists painting up there were Karl Dempwolf, Dave Gallup, Ray Harris, Scott Prior, Junn Roca and Jason Situ.
Yokohl Valley Sunset, 6″ x 8″, Oil on canvas panel, © Eric Merrell
I hope you can see the subtleties in the backlit hill above, those were really the reason for the painting. Both of these pieces were painted on location during the trip. The opportunity was made possible by the Sequoia Riverlands Trust, a wonderful group dedicated to preserving their area of the San Joaquin Valley and bringing attention to their part of the state. Along with all of the ranches interspersed throughout, there are thousand of acres of stone fruits, citrus, walnuts and all sorts of other produce filling the valleys.
The photo below is from the first morning – when I woke up the thermometer read 32 degrees and my truck had a layer of ice on it. Pretty chilly. Luckily, the nights warmed up into the balmy 40′s after that. (Nobody else ended up camping, they all stayed in hotels! So of course I had to tease them about their sense of adventure.)
Beautiful pcs, and good for you, a little frost lets you know your alive.
Hey Dan, thanks. It wasn’t a Maine winter, but cold still! Hope everything is going well for you. Come out to paint California if you need a break from the Northeast weather.
Sounds like a great time. Beautiful color in these two paintings.
On behalf of all of us at Sequoia Riverlands Trust, it was a pleasure to host you all. And the paintings were wonderful! I’m glad you enjoyed your stay here, despite the chilly nights (good for you for camping!). Best of luck with your work. -Niki-
Hi Frank, thanks.
Hi Niki, thanks for visiting – you guys did a great job, it was wonderfully organized! I think everyone enjoyed their time up there, and hope it becomes an annual event! The San Joaquin Valley deserves more attention, especially from artists.
Some day I will be there (hope)
You’re brave soul to sleep outside in the frozen tundra, but it looks like the results were worth it; your paintings are wonderful. Nice blog.
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Hi Belinda, thanks for visiting. I’m working on some more of the history that we were talking about, will put it online in a bit. Hope to see you at another exhibition soon -
Hey Eric, I’ll reciprocate by putting a link to yours on mine. (took me a while to find where to leave a comment, hope you get it) Feel free to link mine on the CAC section of Artist Blogs (unless I need to do it myself, I’ll check)…it’ll force me to write more and keep it up. Your work’s looking Frencher and Frencher all the time. (that’s a compliment) See you at the opening this weekend. I’ll recognize you even if you don’t remember MY face. Later.
Hi Larry, thanks for visiting. Your blog is inked in both places. Mais oui!
This sounds like it was a great time. I know the combination of people and the beautiful area plus doing what you enjoy doing must have made this a memorable time.
I envy you!!!
Hi Marian, yes, but next time I’ll find a campsite that doesn’t have a 9 p.m. curfew for closing the gates! Also had no cell phone reception. I think there was one back down the road in Lemon Cove that was better on both counts.
Beautiful. Stunning. I enjoy your paintings. Worth visiting again and again.
[...] air, French for “in the open air”, to study the way light reveals our world) during a painting trip to the Visalia area this last March, will be part of a new exhibition: Paintings from the Southern [...]
The Southern Sierras and Yokohl Valley « Eric Merrell said this on September 24, 2009 at 9:29 am |