Cape Ann: Offshore Squall. September 1, 2013. Journal Painting. 3.5 x 10.5 inches. Watercolor on paper

Projecting eastward into the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Ann represents a landmass smaller than Cape Cod, that one hundred miles to the south encircles the southern waters of Massachusetts Bay. To the North is the Gulf of Maine, stretching three hundred miles eastward to the Bay of Fundy and Nova Scotia. Here the warm waters Gulf Stream mingle with the Labrador Current flowing south from the arctic region. Proper hurricanes seldom make landfall this far north. However, the offspring of tropical depressions can make for powerful storms that batter southern New England. Cape Ann and the Maine coast are more prone to Nor’easters. Positioned at a pivotal coastal location in relation to these weather-patterns, picturesque cloud-formations and light effects in the region have for centuries attracted artists to Cape Ann as much as its rocky coastline. This summer squall was painted from the seaward lawn at the Emerson Inn, near Cathedral Rocks in the Pigeon Cove section of Rockport.

Drawing on my recollections of cloud studies by Alexander Cozens, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, I was reminded also of the late Bernard Chaet. His summer home was less than a mile from where I sat. Rising before dawn he would set up his painting equipment among the rocks, look out to sea and greet the sunrise. In one of his works dark clouds tower above sparkling seas. As we looked at the painting together. I turned to speak. Burning in his eyes, a fierce light defied the enveloping darkness that soon would overtake him.

Bernard Chaet. 4PM. Oil on Canvas. 2002. Courtesy Lew Allen Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

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Motif Number One; A Sunday Painter’s Dream, painted on a Wednesday in Rockport Mass. 9/4/2013

The fishing-shack is to New England what the log cabin was to the colonial frontier; symbols of enterprise and perseverance confronting the unruly forces of nature. Established in 1840, the village and harbor of Rockport exported granite for the construction industry, all along the eastern seaboard. A fishery had existed in the area since colonial times, as an outpost of the larger port of Gloucester on the southern shore of Cape Ann. The fame of Fitz-Henry Lane attracted many artists to the rocky peninsula, some of whom formed an art-colony in and around Rockport.

Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) Brace’s Rock, Brace’s Cove. Collection of the Terra Foundation.

Among these were Ninon Lacey and Bernard Chaet, who kept a seasonal home north of the village at Pigeon Cove. During the summertime, painters set up their easels next to Bearskin Neck, a rocky spit of land attracting crowds of visitors with cedar-shake gift-shops and seafood restaurants. The focus of their attention is a granite pier known as Bradley’s Wharf, upon which stands red fishing-shack known as Motif #1. First built in 1840, the building was blown apart by a blizzard in 1978. By summertime, a replica had taken its place.
Chaet passed away in 2012. Returning to Cape Ann over Labor Day weekend in 2013, Kathie and I recalled during our final visit with him a few years prior. Ninon had told us that when Bernie drove past the artists clustered around Motif #1, he would shout at them,

“More blue! It needs more blue!”

After lunch, we strolled down to the harbor. “There it is.” Kathie said. “I dare you to paint it.” Taking out my sketchbook and an enameled steel bijou-box of watercolor, I began to measure out the scene. Looking beyond the cliché, I saw in a fishing-shack atop an orderly heap of cut granite a physical metaphor for the entire region. Representing not just an iconic subject for Sunday painters, Motif #1 is a monument to the two industries that sustained the town, prior to the rise of tourism. Pains have been taken by Rockport to keep the wharf free of overhead wires, commercial signage, or anything else that might intrude upon the picturesque subject.

Bernard Chaet.Sunrise. Undated. Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester. MA

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Thomas Pownall, Paul Sandby and William Elliott. View of the Great Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River. 1760. Bookplate engraving after the original print. Collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art.

Topographical landscape painting was already an established genre that dovetailed naturally with the art of map-making and scientific illustration. Specializing in watercolor with a background in mapmaking, Paul Sandby (1731–1809) gained acclaim as a landscape painter. He was the ideal candidate to oversee the drawing program at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where it was believed that by learning how to make art, military officers would become keener observers. Sandby began teaching at Woolwich in 1768. Scenographia Americana was published that year in a series of twenty-eight prints of North American landscapes drawn from observation by British military officers, including former Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall. A view of the Great Falls at Cohoes on the Mohawk River was based on a drawing by Pownall, elaborated by Sandby in 1760 for the engraver William Elliott (1727-1766). An accomplished draughtsman, Pownall also served as Royal Governor of South Carolina, and as Lieutenant-Governor of New Jersey.

Pownall & Sandby. A View of the Falls of the Passaic River in New Jersey. Scenographia Americana.1768

Engravings of views drawn by Pownall and other British military officers were published in London in 1768 as Scenographia Americana, six years before the first plates of Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth) were published by John Boydell, as mezzotint  engravings by Richard Earlom.  Pownall traveled extensively throughout British North America, making drawings, keeping a journal and later collaborating with cartographer Lewis Evans to produce the book, A Topographical Description of Such Parts of North America as are Contained in the Map of the Middle British Colonies, &c. in North America. Published at London by John Almon in 1776.

Lewis Evans. Map of the Middle British Colonies in North America. 1755-1776

“When I was afterward in a Situation to direct the Inquiries of others, I formed a set of instructions for directing the Observations and Remarks of such as were sent out to reconnoitre; and the Returns I received gave very sufficient information as far as it could go. If the Plan, which I proposed and began, has been observed through the (French and Indian) War, namely that of obliging every Scout to keep a Journal with Topographical Remarks; and upon the Returns of these, of copying into a Book (under a general Head, each within their respective District) all these Informations so returned; a very ample store of Topographical Knowledge of the country might have been collected and classed, which is now dispersed and lost. I can speak from experience of the Use of this; I experienced it is my own Province; such classed and posted Accounts would have proved a good Check of the Unfaithfulness of many an artificial journal cooked up by Scouting Parties; moreover the Habit of keeping such Journals, and making such Remarks, would have trained many a good Regimental Officer to become a real General. Without this Knowledge and practical Readiness in applying it, no Officer ought to be trusted with the command of a Body of Men.”

–Thomas Pownall

Paul Sandby is considered the father of watercolor landscape painting. In 1768 Sandby accepted a position at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich to teach drawing to cadets. It was (correctly) believed that instruction in the art of drawing would sharpen the observational skills of future artillery and engineer officers. Pownall’s comments echo this sentiment. This belief, and this pedagogy it demanded, would later be adopted into the curriculum at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

One might presume that because Claude Lorrain (1600-1692) predated Sandby and the others by more than a century, his work exerted a direct influence on their development. Given that no museums yet existed, the only direct access painters might have had to Claude’s work would have been via private collections. Claude’s Liber Veritatis—a kind of catalogue-raisonné of original compositions created by the artist, was known only to those in Georgian England with whom its owner, the Duke of Devonshire, chose to share it. One of these was John Boydell, who engaged printmaker Richard Earlom to reproduce all two hundred of Claude’s drawings in etching and mezzotint for their publication between 1774 and 1777. It is tempting to ponder the notion that the success of Scenographia Americana, published six years prior, helped convince the duke to share Claude’s Liber Veritatis with the world.

Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). A plate from the Liber Veritatis, engraved by Richard Earlom. From a later edition published in 1803 by John Boydell.  Claude’s success as a landscape painter inspired legions of mediocre imitators. In order to protect his intellectual property, Claude documented his original compositions as ink drawings, sometimes with color accents. This he did from ca. 1635 until his death, referring to his catalogue of images as The Book of Truth or in Latin, Liber Veritatis.

Thomas Davies. A South View of the New Fortress at Crown Point with the Camp commanded by Major General Jeffrey Amherst in the year 1759. Watercolor on paper. Collection Winterthur Museum, Delaware

Filtered through the landscape paintings of Richard Wilson (1713–1782), Paul Sandby, and his brother, Thomas Sandby (1728–1798), Claudian influence can be seen in the early works of British artillery officer Thomas Davies (1737–1812). His 1760 watercolor of the British forts and encampment at Crown Point, New York, aestheticizes what could have been little more than a diagram.

Thomas Davies. The Attack of Fort Washington . November 16, 1776. Watercolor on paper. Collections Winterthur Museum,  Delaware.

Davies’s view of the November 16, 1776, attack on Fort Washington in northern Manhattan expresses both topographical specificity and artistic élan. Davies is credited with being the first European to draw Niagara Falls from direct observation.

Thomas Davies. Niagara Falls. Watercolor on Paper. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

The visual language developed by the British military for topographical rendering provided some of the undergirding upon which the civilian artists J. R. Cozens, Thomas Girtin, and J. M. W. Turner built more poetic, creative visions of nature. The landed gentry eagerly decorated their dwellings with views of their rural estates, along with portraits of their horses, hounds, and wives. Like Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827) and his brother James (1749–1831), the Scotsman Archibald Robertson (1765–1835) and his younger brother, Alexander (1772¬–1841), trained under Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Royal Academy in London. Moving to New York in 1792, the brothers established the Columbian Academy on William Street in lower Manhattan. Touring the Hudson Valley in 1796, Alexander Robertson collected picturesque views along the river that were influenced by the British topographical tradition embodied by Richard Wilson, Thomas Gainsborough, and Cozens.

William Russell Birch and Thomas Birch. The City and Port of Philadelphia from Kensington. 1800

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia became the publishing capitol of the nation. Four years after Robertson’s Hudson Valley sojourn, the English-born artist William Russell Birch (1755–1834) engraved and published views of Philadelphia in multiple editions, the first of which appeared in 1800. A booming print culture soon flooded the American public with picturesque views of scenic attractions, from Virginia’s Natural Bridge and Lake Champlain to the falls at Cohoes, New York, and the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia. In the catalogue for her 2019 exhibition From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscape in the Early Republic. Anna Marley writes, “Centrally located between the mighty Delaware and the picturesque Schuylkill . . . Philadelphia was defined and limited by those powerful borders. Images of these rivers not only embodied the ideals of the new American nation-state, but also led to the creation of the Hudson River School.”

Thomas Cole. View of Fort Putnam. Oil on Canvas. 1825. Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The actual start-date for American landscape painting predates Thomas Cole by more than a century. Meeting a practical need for chorographic imagery to accompany topographical maps and nautical charts, scenographic drawings and paintings assisted in the visual recognition of landfalls, harbors and terrain, in much the same way as Jane’s silhouettes later identified warships and aircraft. Military topographical landscape sketches were elaborated for the print market by professional artists like Paul Sandby, who in turn delivered drawing instruction to future military officers. Proficiency in drawing enhanced reconnaissance skills, and thus the process of intelligence-gathering. Following the French and Indian War, popular demand for North American scenery increased. Images produced for military and scientific use were repurposed as etching and engravings, to be consumed by veterans of the Grand Tour, landowners and drawing-room pathfinders.

After Thomas Anburey (1759-1840). View of Kalpy on the Jumna. Francis Jukes. London, 1799. Collection of the British Museum.
(Thomas Anburey served as a lieutenant in the 47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot, during Burgoyne’s campaign of 1777. Taken prisoner at Saratoga, Anburey traveled to Cambridge Massachusetts, then to Charlottesville Virginia before returning to England in 1781. In 1789 he published as a series of letters an entertaining book Travels Through the Interior of North America, 1777-1781. Anburey’s keen observations and clever narrative has been called into question.)

Into this publishing boom enters Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis in 1774, ninety-two years after the artist’s death, and one year after the Boston Tea-Party. Its publication exerted a major influence on both poetic artists and military topographers alike, by further defining their aesthetic goals. In the years following American independence, homegrown talent was joined by new arrivals, clamoring to celebrate the natural wonders of the new republic. The burgeoning print-culture became a melting-pot for professional artists, naturalists and geographers, having already put the American landscape on the map, many years before Thomas Cole made his first voyage up the Hudson River. As before, armchair wanderlust fueled popular demand for etchings and engravings of faraway places; visual travelogues described in a graphic language developed by mapmakers and military topographers. The American landscape-painting tradition was born not on an easel, but in sketchbooks carried in the field by explorers, naturalists and soldiers.

Download the essay Explorers, Naturalists and Military Precursors to the Hudson River School. in HUDSON RIVER VALLEY REVIEW. Volume 37, Number 2. Spring 2021

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Stage Rocks, Gloucester Harbor. Massachusetts. Thursday April 12, 2012

Separated from the mainland by a tidal estuary, the Annisquam River, Cape Ann had long been a summertime home to the Pawtucket tribe, who along the shoreline southwest of modern-day Gloucester had built stages for drying and salting codfish. Standing beside this pre-colonial fish-packing operation stands a cluster of enormous rocks. Half a billion years ago the subduction of tectonic plates released plumes of magma. Rising to the surface, these cooled into granite, forming the bedrock of a micro-climate known to geologists as Avalonia. Scouring by glaciation from the late Cenozoic through the Paleolithic exposed dramatic granite formations at Stage Rocks, Dogtown and Cape Ann’s Atlantic shoreline. The resemblance of Stage Rocks to stony outcroppings at Joshua Tree can be attributed to their creation by similar geological processes.

Stage Rock, Gloucester Harbor. Massachusetts. Wednesday April 11, 2012

Expanding British colonial operations to the northern end of Massachusetts Bay, settlers from Plymouth arrived in 1623. Finding tillable soil inadequate to support much agriculture, they focused their efforts on harvesting the abundant Cod. At first working side-by-side with the newcomers, hostilities between the English and other tribes drove the Pawtucket into exile, or enslavement by British masters. Stage Head projects into the harbor like a natural fortress. During the Pequot War (1636-1638), the position was fortified to guard the harbor, and dispute attacks from the mainland. Updated over the years the fort remained in service until 1898. The Civil War battery was reconstructed in 1930 and is now preserved within a city park that includes ball fields and bathing areas.

Stage Fort. Gloucester Harbor.  Massachusetts. Tuesday, April 10, 2012

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“August 22, 2015. 11:00 AM. View of Monument Valley, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Both the high peaks of the Kaaterskill-Katzenbergs (are visible). in the distance from Beartown State Forest—scenic overlook—scenic overlook is accessible by a vertiginous rocky path”–Journal entry inscribed on the lower left

Rising above the Housatonic River at less than half the elevation of Mount Greylock, Monument Mountain (1,642 feet above sea-level) is also entangled in the history of American letters.
A frequent visitor to the mountain was Great Barrington poet William Cullen Bryant, who wrote,

“It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.”

W.C. Bryant. Monument Mountain (excerpt) 1815.

Bryant was not the only luminary who drew inspiration from its scenic views of the Housatonic Valley. On August 5, 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville hiked to the summit with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Stockbridge lawyer David Dudley, Jr. According to legend, a bottle of champagne was uncorked and Bryant’s poem was read aloud. By whom I cannot say.
Caught in a sudden deluge, the party found shelter in a cave. Following their meeting under these extraordinary circumstances, Hawthorne and Melville embarked on a brief but stimulating correspondence that helped shape the literary trajectories of both authors. Melville dedicated his novel Moby Dick to Hawthorne, whom he regarded as a something of a mentor.

Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, ca 1850-1852

Monument Mountain appears in the distance to the left in this view of the Housatonic (Monument) Valley, with the northern Catskills serrating the western skyline. The goal of a   journal-painting is never to produce a finished product, but to employ the practice of painting as an act reconnaissance; a mode of learning what is beheld, in ways that transform experience into knowledge and ideas. Somewhere between picturing something and truly knowing it is where art abides.

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“But since the majestic mountain, Greylock—my own more immediate sovereign lord and king—hath now, for innumerable ages, been the one grand dedicatee of the earliest rays of all the Berkshire mornings, I know not how his Imperial Purple Majesty (royal-born: Porphyrogenitus) will receive the dedication of my own poor solitary ray.”

–Herman Melville. Pierre, or The Ambiguities. 1852

Looking up from his Pittsfield desk in the dead of winter, Melville beheld the snowy summit of Mount Greylock at a distance of twenty miles. To the writer’s imagination, the long mountain looming above rolling hills resembled the scarred back of a great white whale. Herman Melville (1819-1891) devoted an entire chapter of Moby Dick to the color white, which resonates today, as people of color become targets of bigotry. Having recently re-read Moby Dick, I had forgotten how much of it meanders through a pre-Joycean stream of consciousness; digressions ranging from whaleboat mechanics to a field-guide to hunting, killing, butchering and rendering the wild leviathan into spermaceti and ambergris. Pale illumination and seductive scents were fruits of bloody slaughter. Racially speaking, the whaleship Pequod was a world turned upside down. Seldom present, under the spell of a mysterious Mohammedan, the monomaniacal captain seemed mindful of his moral conundrum, yet incapable of conquering his addiction to the chase. Apart from Starbuck and Stubb, the stars of the ship’s company were the harpooneers. These were people of color; a Pacific Islander, an African, and a Gay Head Wampanoag. Ordinary Americans today may not imagine such diversity truly existed at that time. Yet a century or more before the novel is set, every seafaring tongue from around the globe was spoken on the waterfronts of New Bedford and Nantucket, where in 1716, the Quaker Meeting declared that slavery was “not agreeable to Truth.”

At 3,491 feet above sea-level, the summit of Mount Greylock is the highest point of elevation in Massachusetts. Traversing the Hoosic floodplain at the foot of its northern slopes, the Mohawk Trail was established as an overland east-west trading-route between the Connecticut River and the Hudson Valley. Its remoteness made for excellent hunting-grounds. Bloody clashes between competing native communities intensified with the arrival of Europeans. By the time Melville chronicled the pursuit of Leviathan, many Berkshire County forests had been cleared for farmland. Rivers harnessed for water-powered mills were straddled by towns populated by workers, merchants and service professionals. Logging, quarries and limekilns whittled away whatever wild tracts remained. Denuded of woodlands for lumber and paper-mills, Greylock suffered landslides and wildfires.

Concerned citizens purchased land for a park in 1885. Twelve years later Massachusetts set into motion a process that would protect the mountain within its first state forest preserve. Nathaniel Hawthorne hiked its slopes. The mountain became an object of pilgramge for literary lights of the day such as William Cullen Bryant. Henry David Thoreau spent a night on the mountain in the summer of 1844. When he awoke, a thick fog covered the summit.

“As the light increased I discovered around me an ocean of mist, which by chance reached up to exactly the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the wreck of the world, on my carved plank in cloudland; a situation which required no aid from the imagination to render it impressive.”

–Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. 1849

On one occasion I  found the summit of Mount Greylock blanketed with cool, damp clouds. Gazing across the Hoosic Valley, I saw a bright pathc of light strike the distant ridge, and then another, and another. Moments later I was warmed by bright sunlight, as dark clouds scattered beneath a glorious blue sky.

Large sheets of rock lie exposed at the summit. The bell-shaped Veterans Memorial Tower marks the highest point of elevation in Massachusetts. Its beacon marks the location at night. The northern end of the mountain faces Williamstown, North Adams, and the Mohawk Trail—Route 2, which runs between Troy, New York and Boston. Below to the east. the Hoosic River flows northward, entering the Hudson River near Stillwater. Mill-towns like Adams Massachusetts, the birthplace of women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony; centers of light industry flourished during the nineteenth-century. A century later it had fallen into decline and economic hardship. Today the Hoosic Valley is enjoying a revival. Berkshire County has become a popular destination for weekenders from New York and Boston, as well as a magnet for cultural tourism, with numerous museums and performing arts centers.

Below: James McElhinney at Mount Greylock.

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Boots-on-the-ground cultural historian Kathie Manthorne, at John Ford’s Point. Monument Valley. Navaho Nation.

Rising early, we headed out of Durango on Highway 160. In the darkness, starlight glowed softly on patches of snow in the wooded hills to the south. A cluster of peaks to the north broke the horizon with a ghostly geometry. For a thousand years this had been a hotly contested borderland between the domains of the Ute and Dine. Later a remote corner of New Spain, it had been known for centuries past to only a handful of European trappers, traders and prospectors. Past Mancos the land opened up. Tablelands to the south are scored with more than a dozen long canyons, draining south into the Rio Manco, which drains into the San Juan River near Four Corners. Mesa Verde National Park preserves the remains of ancient dwellings, inhabited by a community of Native Americans. Romanticized as a lost race known as Anasazi, these people are accepted by modern-day Puebloans as their ancestors. Past Cortez the land dropped away to the south as darkness surrendered to the half-light heralding dawn. In the distance, the rosy first light of day painted the crown of Ship Rock, a towering geological formation rising up along the Rio San Juan. Below Towaoc the highway turns to the southwest, past Four Corners. To our amazement, the little park was open, despite heavy accumulations of snow. Vendors were setting up for the day. I bought a piece of fry-bread for the road, which we devoured on the way to Tec Nos Pos (T’iisnazbas, or “Cottonwoods in a circle”) a tiny settlement around a trading-post. To the south arose a landmark elevation noted on the map as Pastoral Peak. We were in the Navaho Nation. Heading west, the road crossed a series of frozen creeks and dry washes. Between low table-lands to the north and south we crossed terrain that would seem familiar to fans of western movies and Road Runner cartoons. Reaching Kayenta, known locally as “K-town” we grabbed a quick breakfast before heading north on Highway 163. One could easily see why the irascible John Ford would go for Harry Goulding’s pitch to use this section of the Colorado Plateau as a filming location. Apart from the gobsmacking scenery, Goulding’s trading-post offered all the amenities required by director, cast and crew; far from meddlesome Hollywood executives and investors.

John Ford’s Point, Monument Valley

Checking into Goulding’s Lodge just before nine o’clock, we dumped our bags. Our room was located at the far end of a modern addition on the same level as the restaurant. The celebrity rooms had all been taken, as had most of the accommodation at The View, a newly-built resort and hotel inside the tribal park. We hired a local guide—a diffident fellow, mid-sixties, wearing weathered denim and a fur-felt cowboy hat. Driving a high-clearance white Jeep with giant tires and roll-bar, we passed The View. Our guide explained that a couple of Anglos had raised the capital. Married to local girls, they got a pass on tribal zoning restrictions. I never fact-checked his story. It was a reminder that while tourism dollars were welcome, outsiders were another matter. A popular destination within the park is a narrow rocky outcropping known as John Ford Point—named for the director of classic westerns like Stagecoach, and The Searchers. Visitors park in a pull-off, then walk down a short trail. Reaching the feature, one runs a gauntlet of local artisans peddling native jewelry and other keepsakes. For a fee one can get onto a horse, which is walked out onto the rocky diving-board. Pictures are taken, just like in the movies. I shot a photo of Kathie, sin caballo. Amidst the ruckus I produced a hasty sketch, elaborating it later back in our hotel-room. Before dawn I discovered our car covered in snow, which continued to fall.

Ear of the Wind. Monument Valley

Like many geological features within Monument Valley Tribal Park, Ear of the Wind seems to have been concocted by the same kind of marketing magic that transformed Marion Morrison into John Wayne. The large circular aperture in a large outcropping of de Chelly sandstone was formed by the process of chemical exfoliation. Entering the rock, water dissolves the small particles that act as a binder. Loosening larger grains in the sandstone accelerates the natural process of erosion. Moisture gathered in rocky niches, which are enlarged by persistent winds that carry away the exfoliated particles. In igneous dikes and other geological formations with high aspect ratios, openings can appear which in time become stone arches. Ear of the Wind is accessible only to visitors accompanied by a licensed Navaho guide. Parking the Jeep, our guide led us to the edge of a conical mine-tailing of gravel and rocky debris—remnants of the sandstone mass formerly occupying that space where now abides a gaping pothole arch. Its height I estimated to be three or four stories above the valley floor. We decided to linger a while for lunch, which gave me some time to map out a composition and lay down some color-notes. Never very talkative, our guide was more like an off-road car service driver. He next delivered us to the Eye of the Sun—another pothole aperture atop a petrified bandshell, which in the failing light was evocative of the installation-art of James Terrell

At Monument Valley. Tuesday December 28, 2010.

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Drawing and writing are two sides of the same coin. Both are sensory-cognitive practices. One makes visible the spoken word, while the other transcribes visual sensation into written form. One finds in East Asian painting an almost effortless rapport between calligraphy and picture making, perhaps due in part to a writing system that has preserved some of its pictorial attributes. Instead of worrying about whether or not a drawing needs to confine itself to making pictures, remember the words of Rembrandt Peale: “Drawing is little else than writing the forms of objects.” Expeditionary journal keeping is less about producing works of art than engaging an experience, digesting data, and compressing the file. The practice itself is the art. Always in the back of my mind is the fact that Leonardo’s greatest contribution is not the Mona Lisa but his sketchbooks. Written on the left side of this page spread is the following text:

“3:30 P.M. February 21, 2012. Joshua Tree National Mon. at about the midpoint of the Hidden Valley Nature Loop—Amazing variety of plant-life. The rock formations bespeak of past violence + upheaval, making anthropomorphic fantasies clinging together like souls in Hell. Apart from the imminent danger represented by reptiles, inclement weather, and the shades of McHaney Brothers gang of cattle-rustlers, the terrible beauty of this place is teeming with life, and within the so-called Hidden Valley—some of them without (outside of Hidden Valley), offering an infinity of subjects for drawing, painting, photography, and other modes of reflection.”

Private efforts to preserve its unique setting and to protect a fragile ecosystem from real-estate development resulted in 825,000 acres being set aside as Joshua Tree National Monument in 1936. Forty years later, Congress protected 420,000 acres as wilderness. In 1994 Joshua Tree was promoted to park status. Naming the geological attractions in Joshua Tree National Park, like the buttes and arches in Monument Valley, was a way to bestow identity to recognizable features of terrain in ways that reflect a human desire for the picturesque. Skull Rock, Hall of Horrors, and Jumbo Rocks conjure up thrilling images of matinee adventures. Sculpted by tectonic activity and subsequent erosion, fantastical geological formations within the park have long served as a backdrop for television, cinema, and advertising photo shoots. Among these features is a semi-enclosed inselberg dubbed Hidden Valley. An easy mile-long loop trail and legendary escalades make Hidden Valley a magnet for rock-climbing enthusiasts.
One remembers Chief Niwot’s curse: beautiful places will attract so many people that their beauty will be lost. Sitting on a rock to produce this drawing, I was passed by dozens of hikers and a fair number of dogs. Many appeared to be late for an appointment with the next destination on their bucket-list, hastily consuming the experience rather than taking time to absorb it. The purpose of hikes is not to get to the finish line but to invite new experience. The words of John Burroughs came to mind:

“If you want to learn something new, take the path you took yesterday.”

Ascending (not descending) to the entrance of Hidden Valley, one beholds a sweeping vista stretching eastward across Lost Horse Valley toward Pinto Basin, past Ryan Mountain. Rising 1,000 feet above the pediment, the summit, at 5,465 feet, is one of the highest points accessible to hikers within the park. The large, rocky outcropping to the right is classified an “inselberg,” or island mount, because it rises from the desert floor like an island from the sea. Known as “pediment,” the flat expanses between scattered elevations and outcroppings appear flat but are in fact slightly inclined. As wind, rain, and chemical erosion gnaw away at its slopes, the mountain retreats. The descending ground level forms a plain, exposing large gneiss formations to spheroid weathering. Entering through fissures created by immense pressure underground, water and chemicals cause erosion together with windblown grit that sculpts the rock into organic forms. Scattered across the expanse between my perch and Ryan Mountain is an orderly grove of Joshua Trees, Yucca brevifolia. In arranging this composition, it was important for me to capture geological variations—mountain, inselberg, pediment, and foliage. The image is framed with a shadowed foreground—a Claudian repoussoir substituting the rock wall to the right for an arboreal anchor. It was designed with a leftward diagonal sweep into the distance. Emerging from the close, almost intimate confines of the Hidden Valley Loop, I was delighted to be greeted by this panorama. Preserving that feeling is what I sought to convey.

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