'Sierra Del Carmen'

[Click image for larger.]

Dawn Waters Baker
Sierra Del Carmen (Big Bend National Park, recent but date unknown)
Oil on canvas, w72" x h36"
In private collection
More at the artist's website

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Should be in Texas at the time this posts, kicking around Austin for the rest of the weekend. Never been to this city or state, and there are two things I like to do in a new place:

1.  Go out for a walk before sunrise. It's a great way to get a feel for a space's rhythm and the people around tend to be locals rather than tourists, so for people-watching and location-scouting (via camera or sketchbook), it's tough to beat. The downside is that you do have to get yourself out of bed, so sometimes my significant other and/or traitor body is less keen on this. (Missed-the-morning alternative 1 is finding a place to comfortably park it for an hour or so and do some on-site sketching. Relatively, s'okay.)

2.  Visit the art. The wonderful and tragic thing about physical art objects is that there is indeed something different about seeing most objects in person vs. photographs online, so getting to see the art where it "lives" is always a pleasure. And I have yet to see a location that does not have its own art (that it produces and/or that it embraces as representation), so rolling around in that for awhile can occasionally lead to new stories and those new perspectives that artists/art lovers always bang on about.

Will post some of the stuff I managed to see myself starting Monday, but for the weekend, just going to feature a few works by Texan artists — first up, contemporary landscape/skyscape-focused artist Dawn Waters Baker.