The Grand Canyon West of Mohave Point. 60 x 90.

1. Letter June 27, 1977 to Peter Hassrick. The Grand Canyon is never
the same, but like the sea, is always changing color and shadows with
the hours, the daily weather and the seasons. No matter how often I go
to it, I feel as if I am seeing it for the first time. Whenever I come
home, I am filled with the fire of a totally new impression and the
urge to launch into a great canvas to express it all. So far the
restraining influence has been the size of the studio door, but we are
working on that.
2. Written for the Whitney Catalogue Project,
March 1990.
I saw it in an instant. The light had changed before I
could even get a camera. I made a pencil sketch with notations of
color and light in words to aid my visual memory. I took detail 35 mm
pictures of the various formations for accuracy of surface detail. I
placed the parts of the terrain with a USGS contour map, and finally
painted it trying to keep my original vision sharp. It was my first
major attempt at the Grand Canyon in the size I felt it needed.

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