Petrified Forest National Park

Less than a month after leaving Crater Lake I drove south to Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona for a two week art residency. I left the cold and snowy mountains behind and entered a landscape unlike anything I had ever experienced.

In the northern part of the park I hiked across flat grassland that, when I least expect it, would disappear into a maze of rolling badland hills of the Painted Desert hundreds of feet below. The domes and waves of colored dirt, rock, and mudstone were most unexpected shades of pink, red, lush brown, white, and silvery greys.

Every day I walked across the road from the historic adobe house I got to call home to watch the sun rise and set. In the morning the light was always a surprise, stretching languidly out from mountains visible over 600 miles away in the clear air. And in the evening, I would sit by the rim and watch the blue shadows of the day seep up the badlands like a deep purple ink wicked into the fibers of the landscape. I never got tired of watching the shadows deepen as the vibrant colors of the desert glowed in the last minutes of sunlight. And then, like a switch suddenly flipped, the hills shifted to blue and the gradient of the sky came alive with the Belt of Venus. Shadows and reflections of the earth writ large in the sky.

The southern part of the park is a rainbow of colors in a whole different way. I will never forget the first time I walked through a forest of trees scattered on the ground. Every one a petrified trunk, some larger than my height. In some places the ancient trees are plainly colored with the patterns of the bark and rings of the trunk preserved in subdued hues. In other area, however, the stone is a cacophony of color; reds, golds, greens, and even blues and purples. My hiking pace slowed to a crawl as I marveled at the patterns of a tree’s heartwood preserved in a rainbow of jasper. Learning to paint the intricacies of the wood was one of my favorite parts of the residency.

And here, too, I experienced more extreme weather. For over half of my residency the temperatures were over 95 deg F, the winds gusting to 55 mph, and the humidity was around 5%(exceptionally low even for this arid climate). There was also a extreme fire danger red flag warning that spread across four states. These conditions made painting outside like painting under a giant hairdryer; my paints did things I have never seen, and countless pieces of paper tried to escape with the wind. Most days, I hiked in the morning and did quick sketches outside before retreating inside to paint, listen to the wind, and watch little triangles of sand form beside gaps in the doors and windows.