These Mineral King oil paintings began as four little messes. After the second pass over the canvas, they dried outside in the sun for 24 hours. That was all it took for them to be ready to scan and move up the hill to the Silver City Store for sale.
They NEVER look as good on the screen as in person. (Feel like taking a drive up a long and winding road?)
Each one is 4×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, ready to hang without a frame or to set on a shelf, $54 includes California sales tax.
This month I am spending a large chunk of time just goofing off instead of working. This means I don’t have much to post about in terms of my art business. But, does anyone care? And is it necessary to post five days a week, as is my habit? It isn’t Friday, and yet I’m going on and on about Mineral King. Again, I ask “does anyone care”?
I do. I care. Been doing this blog for over ten years, five days a week, and not gonna stop now. Nope. Not.
So there.
Mineral King oil paintings have been selling steadily this summer at the Silver City Store/Resort.
The popularity of subjects has changed a bit. The Honeymoon Cabin is this year’s favorite, the Crowley cabin/Farewell Gap (view from the bridge at the end of the road) is second, and only one Sawtooth painting has sold. All the other paintings are in the category of Everything Else, which includes back country, trails, streams, and general scenery of the area.
The most popular size remains 6×6″ (perhaps because I paint more of that size than any other) with the second most popular size 4×6″. The large paintings look good in the store, but most people just want a bargain.
There are a couple more on the list of solds, but I didn’t keep close enough track and can’t find the scans of those paintings. (There are drawbacks to living in 2 places, one of them without the internet, but I bravely soldier on.)
Maybe for next year I should just do 6×6″ Honeymoon Cabin oil paintings. Wait, that won’t work because the market for those may be saturated. But wait. . . are the customers one-time visitors, repeat guests, or cabin community members?
The business of art is full of by-guess-and-by-golly. There is so much more to being an artist than just painting. . . all the thinking and planning in the world is still just an intuitive guess.
There’s that annoying word, “busy”. Full calendar, perhaps, might be a better thing to say. No, that isn’t really true, because I scheduled three days of doing just about nothing. Mineral King has been busy because with the closure of Yosemite, visitors are coming hard and fast into Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. It has taken them a bit longer to discover Mineral King, but the back country trails have been filling up.
The Mineral King Preservation Society has an annual event that used to be called “The Hoedown”. Someone finally pointed out that no one knows what that word actually means, and the MKPS had the good sense to change it to the classier “Music in the Mountains”.
Trail Guy was the organizer, and he did a great job! Excellent evening together in Mineral King for anyone who had the good fortune to be there.
A good time was definitely had by all!
I’ve spent more time in Mineral King than home working in August so the subject needs Friday as well as Monday next week.
Mineral King’s wildflowers peak in July, but there are still beautiful sights in August.
This girl can step out, even wearing a backpack that probably tops 45 lbs. I had to focus to stay on her 6, carrying my 4 lb. day pack. How embarrassing. When we got to the Trail Junction (affectionately known as the “Wildflower Cafe”), we had a snack, and then I announced that I had gone as far as I wanted to go.
I came to see some Explorer’s Gentian, and they did not disappoint.
They make the Sierra Gentian look boring by contrast. (Or perhaps my photos do that.)
Eight was enough miles for the day. We got back to the cabin before the sky opened up, and I got more knitting done. (Our friend probably was at her destination, hunkered down in her tent.)
My four little messes from last week have become paintings. This 4×6″ size is tricky to paint. I hold them in my left hand, often ending up wearing paint in addition to applying it, and always wishing for smaller and smaller brushes. They retail for $50 (plus 8% tax, welcome to California) each, and the place that sells them takes a bite out of the $50, so I have to be careful to not pour too many hours into them.
In other words, I have to “settle”. Two passes over the canvas is all they get, and rather than focus on precision, I focus on pleasing colors and contrast. That’s not natural to this Central California artist whose specialty is detail in pencil.
But, I bravely soldier on. . .
But wait! There’s more!
It has been a few weeks since I oil painted. Little paintings are selling steadily at the Silver City Resort/Store 4 miles below Mineral King, and in this final push of summer before the season shuts down after Labor Day, it seems wise to load up their shelves.
How in the world do people complete a painting in only one pass over the canvas? I’ve done it, but right now it seems like a foreign language that I have never heard before.
It was easy to choose the subjects to paint, and goodness knows, I have hundreds of photos of the same scenes in Mineral King, all in different lights.
Here are four little messes. By “little”, I mean 4×6″. By “messes”, I mean OH NO HAVE I FORGOTTEN HOW TO PAINT??
Stick a fork in it, it’s done. (Better not – the tines will bend.)
I gave this another good look. A few more branches on the left, another tree straightening, and my signature were all that it needed.
Trail Guy and I wrapped it in 2 pieces of cardboard using duct tape around the edges and loaded it in the Botmobile for the next trip up the hill.
Sawtooth on a saw blade is finished! It is a relief to have accomplished an odd job and be pleased with the results.
One last photo; this is where it was and how it looked before it came my way:
At this time of year, I am living in two places. One is Up and the other is Down.
This has its ups and downs. . . the biggest Up is that no one is looking at his phone while up the hill, unless scrolling through to show you a photo. Nothing is beeping, pinging, ringing, or dinging. People are present. Things are slower, less urgent, minus the frantic pace of down-the-hill living that now passes for normal.
The Down side is that while I am down the hill, I am scrambling to answer emails, respond to comments, write and schedule blog posts, send out invoices and orders, plan for new paintings, do the regular errands and the chores, and all the rest of normal life. (I also miss my kitties and my yard and my walking buddy while I am up the hill.)
While I’m having an extended stay up the hill, I make a long list of things to attend to when I get back down the hill. This way I can do up-the-hill things without wondering if I am neglecting down-the-hill things. I AM neglecting down-the-hill things, but they can wait.
Have you noticed this? These days people seem to have forgotten how to wait. There is a frantic aggressiveness in many drivers, there is a need for instant messaging and texting no matter where one is, and people must fill every second with something to do while waiting so that the time won’t be wasted. Who just stands in line, looking around or chatting with strangers any more?
Life up the hill reminds us how to wait in many ways. We pull to the side of the road in a wide spot to wait for oncoming traffic to pass, we wait for the phone to ring because there is no answering machine to grab an expected call, we wait for the fire in the wood stove to get hot enough to boil water for coffee, we wait to see various animals, we wait for friends and neighbors to arrive, and we wait until we get home to answer emails and phone messages and regular mail.
So, I hope you all are able to wait well and enjoy life in the present. (You may have to wait for a blog post that shows you my latest work in progress.)
Because I went coastal last week, I don’t have any new stories to tell about my crazy life in Mineral King. (not truly crazy, just me exaggerating. . .)
Instead, here are 10 photos of Mineral King wildflowers for you to enjoy.
Do you have a favorite? Do you know any of these by different names?