Great Sand Dunes Solitude

A road trip through New Mexico and Colorado, four years before actually moving to the West, included Great Sand Dunes National Park. The shapes and colors of the dunes, especially in contrast to the mountains in the background, along with the constantly moving shadows across the dunes, made this a very memorable place and one I really wanted to capture in oils. Contrary to my usual desire to represent visited places somewhat accurately, I felt the gnawing need to add a little forgotten, overgrown homestead in the middle-ground. If one peruses my work, one can see that I often paint scenes that involve the passing of time, but in this instance, I was also interested in featuring the relative scale of the little forgotten house in contrast to the monumental scale of this startling vista.