From the Time and Place Series

As is always the case, there’s so much that I want to paint, and simply not enough time. I charge ahead, trying to capture the moments that have struck me between the eyes, small and large; trying with all my ability to capture what captivates me, hoping that it will captivate you. Striving in the midst of work and busyness just take a moment to be.

The title for this show, time and place came to me as a way of representing what I so desperately seek to capture. When you are invited to an event, it’s a one-time thing.
Time: 10 AM
Place: The Holy Chapel

If you miss it, the bride and groom have gone, the sun has set, conversations have ended, the flowers have withered.

So, I’ve gathered some favorite events and put them on canvas.

I hope you’ll take the time to stop, and look, and appreciate a beautiful fleeting moment.

28×22 Oil on Canvas

(this Painting will be a part of the Cowgirl Up exhibit and sale, March 31st, 2022. Please contact cowgirlup@westernmuseum.org to purchase)

From the Time and Place series

This was my first time visiting Kinishba Ruins near Fort Apache Historic Park. Having recently read Craig Child’s “House of Rain” and Martha Summerhayes’ “Vanished Arizona”, which both describe this historic area of Arizona, I was excited to walk this land and imagine the activity that once filled this 600-room pueblo.

Constructed around 1250 A. D. by the pre-Colombian Mogollon culture, there were supposedly 1000 occupants doing life here; having meals, celebrating, grieving losses, arguing, laughing, resting.

As I walked carefully around the sandstone walls, I began to see plant life that interested me. Specifically, the silverleaf nightshade.

These star-shaped purple blooming plants are common, but complicated. They are showy with yellow stamens and fruit, have beautiful silvery foliage, reseed easily, and are drought-tolerant. They are also prickly, and entirely toxic.
Most tribes who have inhabited this area have used nightshade for various purposes. In my research, I learned that the medicine men would chew the root and treat rattlesnake bites.
But maybe on an afternoon this this, the children of the pueblo would do what I did as a kid. Maybe they would gather a bunch for their mom. And maybe they would lay on their backs and watch the clouds. And maybe, when the sun sank and the skies turned from cerulean to indigo, they would watch the stars come out.
I bet they did.
-dh

from the Time and Place series