Dressed up Landscape

Years ago I lived in a house on a mountain ridge with windows the length of the bed facing east.  We had rented a home on a 300 acre horse ranch and I loved that place.  The view stretched on for mile after mile of mountain ridges.  I loved that place more than any place I've ever lived, it was remote and very beautiful.  Each morning I woke to the same scene in a different mood and I fell deeply in love with the moods of the mountains, the vivid clear days and the days when the fog had settled into the valley.  Thunder storms were vivid and intense and there were times I felt completely enveloped in the overwhelming experience of a real storm in all it's severe beauty.  I LOVED that!  Every atmospheric change brought a new look to the landscape and I was repeatedly awed by the experience of living in that amazing place.

I started the habit of photographing the scene from the front porch to document some of that experience.  I do the same thing these days from my back deck.

I LOVE living in a place where looking out the windows is a pleasure.  There isn't anything I can create as an artist that is anywhere as cool as snow, a sunrise, a rainbow or a thunder storm.  Creator God is the best artist of all.  

I also love snow.  In case you hadn't noticed.  Thanks for dropping by, happy creating!
-Carmen Rose

Found Art

Well, not in the traditional sense of "found art" like finding something at the dump and taking it home and putting gallery lighting on it and calling it something...

Found art in the sense that I made this years ago and then promptly forgot it existed. And I found it today and I like it. So I'm thinking I'll see if I can find a decent frame and pop this thing up on a wall somewhere.

It's the view from Warm Springs Mountain in Virginia, I used to drive past this view on the way to and from work every day as I crossed the mountain. I love Virginia mountains!!!

Detail:


It's watercolor layered with colored pencils.

Traveling Home Again

We made a trip to the midwest to enjoy friends and family and I enjoyed taking photos out of the car's windows. Here are a few:
The wild fog shrouded mountains of West Virginia.
The mountains give way to the flat lands of Ohio though you can still spot some small rolling hills in the distance.
But when you get to Indiana, it's really just flat for miles. This is big sky country out here, which is just so unlike my Virginia home. I really do like the wide open places.
A little taste of small town U.S. heartland, I'm guessing that this is in Ohio somewhere. It always looks the same, each time we drive by.
Cool sky, though I don't know where we were when I took this photo.
This was early evening in Indiana, a mild thunderstorm. I was standing out in the rain with my flip cam hoping for some big lightening or bold crashes but got nothing. (except a little wet)

I started playing "tourist" on the way to our friend's home, taking photos of the Amish buggies.
This one is a convertable buggy? LOL!
A little extra peace and quiet, just for you.
There is something about these big monster tower type thingis that fascinates me.
Such clean lines, symmetrical, orderly... which is strange because I think symmetry is a cop out. An artist can use balance without needing to rely on symmetry... but the lines on these things are cool. And on the road home, we passed through the mountains of West Virginia once more.

Our drive home was a long one but very beautiful!

It was a lovely trip, full of great food and connecting with dear friends. It was good for the soul! Yes indeed, nothing like some beauty, great food and excellent friends. Just nothing like it.

Transformation

The view from back deck of Studio B has been changing dramatically over the last two months. Each of the photos represented in these stitched shots has been taken between March 2nd and today, April 30th of this year. I put them in an order that looked right and then realized later that they are not at all in order by date. The second and forth images are two times of the same day, we woke up to a light dusting of snow which quickly vanished as the sun came out.
We’ve had all kinds of weather from cold and snow, fog, to a few days this week that were downright hot! At the beginning of March we could see blue mountains in the distance and now the leaves started popping out on the trees closing us in little by little. First the cherry (?) tree started to bloom, and now we are enjoying the three small dogwood trees. (dogwoods - lower left of first image.)

What an amazing transformation. I’m grateful to live in this place. I really am.