Desert Landscapes

I just spent a week in Santa Fe with my husband and his family. I had no idea there were so many art galleries there. We had a great time, though I think my husband was pretty sick of art browsing by the end of the trip.

One highlight for me was our guided tour of the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. I was shocked to find that there were only two flower paintings on display in the entire place. I learned from our guide that her flowers make up a very small portion of her body of work. Most of her paintings were landscapes, inspired by the New Mexican desert.

Unfortunately, I did not make any time to sketch while visiting Santa Fe. I dug through some old artwork when I came home to try to find something to share with you all this week. I was pleasantly surprised to find an old drawing that my great grandmother did. It's a pastel of a desert landscape (fitting, I thought):

I'm personally glad to be back near the beach. That dry air is murder on the sinuses. Even so, the desert holds a certain beauty. While we were there, we witnessed two wildfires in progress. I took a few snapshots of the sun setting into the smoke of one fire burning near Los Alamos:

It made a pretty spectacular backdrop for our barbecue. Yet, again, the smoke wasn't so great for the sinuses.