Great Basin Valley South of Ely, Nevada

Part 2. Inspiration

On my previous blog I told about my reaction to the Great Basin desert as we drove across on Highway 50. We were headed for Lehman Caves in what is now Great Basin National Park when I found inspiration for this painting. Great Basin National Park is about 75 miles southeast of Ely, Nevada. From Ely the highway leads due south for about 20 miles, traversing most of the length of a long basin with its own rolling contours, low hills, a reservoir or two, and occasional homesteads. After we passed the State Park road to the Ward Charcoal Ovens, (http://parks.nv.gov/parks/ward-charcoal-ovens) the highway curved east into the next mountain range. My painting captures the view near that curve.

I enjoyed this lengthy ride down the valley while I sized up the scope of the scene as well as desert colors and small details. The day was a beautiful sunny/cloudy day with a nearly constant desert breeze disturbing the sagebrush. Near the turn I spotted the small ranch on the right, with a rustic house, an outbuilding or two, an old car, and a fenced green pasture. Nestled within the vast sweeps of sagebrush and meadows the place appeared tiny. Here was the human side of that magnificent view, a grand space that seemed to expand on every side. In my planned painting I hoped the sight of the homestead would ground viewers and emphasize the immensity of the sky, the valley, and the mountains on either side and beyond.

Another focal point was the mass of clouds that radiated from the horizon at the end of the valley. The clouds spread toward us and filled the sky overhead with rows of cumulus pillows. Clouds that appear to radiate from a given source are termed Cumulus radiatus clouds in the Cloud Collector’s Handbook.*** Also called “cloud streets”, the handbook reports that glider pilots love them because the clouds indicate “avenues of lifting air along which the pilots can reliably gain altitude.” I’m not sure my painted radiatus clouds have enough space between them to be true to form, but that is what I saw.

The valley itself showcased an incredible number of earth colors: yellow ochre, sepia, Indian red, the umbers, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and an odd shade of olive green. I usually think of sagebrush as grey–green in color. Zane Gray called it purple in his book, Riders of the Purple Sage. I had to agree when on one occasion in Arizona I did see a landscape with lighting and cloud conditions that caused sagebrush to appear a soft purple. It was beautiful and slightly mysterious. Sky conditions can draw forth many hues, but sage, up close, is truly a soft grey–green in color, the leaves a bit fuzzy in texture. Big sage, Artemisia tridentata is the sage we identified. It is wonderfully aromatic, with a pungent scent all its own. The fragrance after a rain is my favorite desert perfume.

Big sagebrush and other Artemisia species are the dominant plants across large portions of the Great Basin. It’s a fascinating region geologically. It covers a huge area, nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, and Wyoming. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin)  It is the largest endorheic basin in North America, meaning its waterways have no outlet to the sea. In my next Saturday Blog I will tell you about “sky islands” and Art.

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Are you a cloud watcher? Did you know there is a Cloud Appreciation Society? I understand the attraction; I love to watch clouds. This group hopes to fight the banality of ‘blue-sky thinking’. (www.cloudappreciationsociety.org)
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***The Cloud Collector’s Handbook, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney  https://www.chroniclebooks.com/(San Francisco: 2011) p. 46. A great book for sky–watchers.
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Painting: Great Basin Valley south of Ely, NV, 36×24 watercolor print on unframed canvas, @1980, Artist: Janice E. Kirk.

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