Cave Mountain

Gorgeous!

Thank you. Your opinion means a lot to me.

Oh, golly. Thank ya.

This work seems to be the most clearly oriental of the ones available here. Your othe work tends toward the expressionist as far as i can tell.

So what or why the Sumi? was it an exercise or did the subject lend itself to the technique?
I too like this work very much. The sparse pen and ink I think give a much better inerpretation of the scale and space of the South West. At the same time the oriental style of the work forces us to look at the familiar with hopefully new eyes.

Buzzcook

That IS nice. I missed it before -- thanks for bumping it up, buzzcook. (And welcome!) I like the signature, too. (The red character on the lower right.)

Yep, I agree - quite amazing.

At one time I did a lot of sumi brush stuff, most of which is long gone. I signed most of those drawings with my personal chop, a gift from my Chinese professor. In Chinese, I am Sher Ming (bright student). I still have my sumi tools, but haven't really been inspired to do much with them in years. Trying to master the oils is tough enough for now.

Cave Mountain was one of two landscape figures that dominated my childhood. At the base of that cliff, which is probably 10 miles away, is a large cave. One can ride a horse to the base of the mountain, but then you climb the slope which is very steep and littered with boulders larger than most houses. Even if you are in good physical shape, you will be panting, hot and exhausted by the time your reach the cliff face. The cave is probably fifty feet in height, and maybe seventy feet wide at the base. Far above on the ceiling, bees nest. Water seeps down through the sandstone through the hives, and down the walls of the cave. Arriving at the entrance to the cave, one can slack their thirst by running a hand along the wet wall for a taste of sweet moistness in the midst of the Sonora Desert. From the cave entrance, one can see down into Mexico and westward make out the smokestacks of the Phelps Dodge smelter in Douglas.

The smokestacks are now gone, lost to more plentiful foreign copper that can be had cheaply and to the Company's dedication to environmental cleanliness. Teenagers back in the fifties used to find a hill overlooking the smelter's slag heap to park and make out. Fiery embers would pour down like water and the redness would be reflected from the bottoms of the sulpherous clouds billowing out of the smoke stacks. The sight was almost always a good aphrodisiac, especially when helped along with a few brews.