IAAA Death Valley workshop 2005
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The scenery of Death Valley can be somewhat overwhelming: a ramble of textures, stratified layers of rock, faults, rugged mountains, weathered sandstone, mosaic breccia - it is tempting to want to paint everything and then be left with a bewildering rendering that no longer makes sense... To avoid this pitfall I decided to leave tone and volume aside. and focused on the distribution and proportion of colour, turning rock faces into abstracted planes of hues. Working mostly with my palette knife I replicated the quilt of magenta, ocre brown and various shades of green rock that makes Death Valley so unique.

All works are acrylic on paper, with n otes in coloured pencil.