Texas Hill Country

8x10 oil on stretched cotton canvas
$200 (email me if interested)

Another painting of my stomping grounds. My favorite is painting sun dapples through the trees. I always paint them using the same colors. Maybe I should step out on a limb (no pun intended) and try other colors.

Enchanted Rock #2

20x24 oil on stretched cotton canvas
NFS
It has been awhile since I have posted anything. Even so, I have been painting everyday. I recently finished this larger piece. It is a gift for my wonderful Air Force son. Shhh! don't tell. He hasn't seen it yet. He will be coming home on leave in a couple of weeks. It is for his new apartment to remind him of Texas. I hope he likes it. I have also been doing a series of urban landscapes of Austin. I will post some of them later.

Enchanted Rock

12x16 oil on stretched cotton canvas
$500 (email me if interested)

The Rock is a huge, pink granite exfoliation dome, that rises 425 feet above ground, 1825 feet above sea level, and covers 640 acres. It is one of the largest batholiths (underground rock formation uncovered by erosion) in the United States.
Tonkawa Indians believed ghost fires flickered at the top, and they heard weird creaking and groaning, which geologists now say resulted from the rock's heating by day and contracting in the cool night. A conquistador captured by the Tonkawa described how he escaped by losing himself in the rock area, giving rise to an Indian legend of a "pale man swallowed by a rock and reborn as one of their own." The Indians believed he wove enchantments on the area, but he explained that the rock wove the spells. "When I was swallowed by the rock, I joined the many spirits who enchant this place." Jim and I climbed to the top a couple of weekends ago. I took lots of pictures to paint.

Texas Ranch Road

8x10 oil on stretched linen canvas
$250 (email me if interested)
Jim and I drove around this weekend so I could take some pictures. We turned off onto this road that was one lane with cattle guards. We went for a couple of miles until it ended at the Guadalupe River. Even though it is a public road I am sure it is used mostly by the rancher that is on both sides of the road. This is one of the few places left here that hasn't been touched by developers. So sad.

Texas Homestead and Prickly Pear

8x10 oil on cotton canvas panel
$250 (email me if interested)

The photogragh does not show the highlights on the corner of the house and edges of the cactus very well. This is the third painting of this same house. There is something about it that has Texas Hill Country written all over it.

Texas Homestead

8x10 oil on cotton canvas panel
$200 (email me if interested)

Before the subdivision we live in now was developed, it was a beautiful ranch along the Guadalupe River. There are huge oaks, limestone cliffs overlooking the river and stone walls still standing from the early 1900's. The original ranch home was built by Adam Becker for his family who journeyed to Texas from Germany to join Prince Carl Holms-Braunfels. Together they established Fredericksburg and other surrrounding colonies. My painting is of the back of the home. It was made of locally quarried stone and hand-hewn cypress from the banks of the Guadalupe. The original building still exists but the owners have added to it. When we first built our house back in 1994 no one had made any changes to it. It was so interesting to walk amoung the grounds and feel the history.