This holiday season was different. First year as empty-nesters. First year without my mom. Kids home from college and the 30-year-old furnace dies on the cusp on Christmas Eve. Bats in the belfry (what we’re calling our garage these days). But. . .lots of beauty, too. Kids who made the best of a cold house, some good people coming around in the new year to help with the bats and the furnace. Nestled in between all that, a really short family trip to Arizona.

I use trips as a chance to see what observations I can come back with using materials that don’t take much space in a carry-on. In this case I packed pencils and black pens. I hiked two days, really trying to look at the plants and rock shapes in the desert, and went out alone at sunrise and sunset to observe colors and take photos with my iPhone.

I painted this 16″x20″ oil painting on a canvas panel about two weeks after returning. The goal was simply to capture the December morning I walked alone on the trail watching the sunrise. The challenge was to understand how sunlight covers the desert floor and mountains just prior to emerging, and to capture the mood of the Saguaro appearing mostly as silhouettes.