Found … Recapture Pocket.

Friday, 12^th January_Sunday, 14^th January, 2018; Recapture Pocket, Utah.

C1653

“Sunset Skies Study #1”

(Canyonlands National Park, Utah)

Oil Study on Centurian Oil Primed Panel

5” x 7”

Click here to make this Your Own

The first of two sunset skies studies I did while in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

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Back in October 2013 (the 14^th to be exact), was my first night in the deserts of the Southwest.  I had come down from the San Juan Mountains, in Colorado, where I had been waiting for the government shutdown to end, so I could visit some of the National Parks, on my way back to Oregon, where I had to be by the end of that month for an exhibition.  Time was getting short, so I had to move, and passing by a closed Mesa Verde, and drove into southeastern Utah.  I was close to Recapture Pocket near Bluff, Utah, and although I thought I was in part of it, I was not.  I was about a mile or so to the east of it, on the wrong side of the wash, and though I had a very pleasant night, with a quarter Moon lighting the night.  The painting (seen here), was done the next morning, and as it happens, Recapture Pocket is below the high ground on the horizon.  If only I had known.  As I negotiated the rough and sandy track back out from my campsite, I met a small SUV, coming in.  He was also looking for Recapture Pocket, and was from Reno, Nevada.  I told him it might be further back and up a wash I had seen, but couldn’t be sure … turns out I misdirected him.

In Recapture Pocket.

Armed with a little more information, than last time, I managed to come straight to it yesterday (as I write this), about an hour before sundown.  Today I strolled through mushrooms and goblins of stone taking photographs … all day.  With the changing light, as the Sun crossed the sky, photo-ops kept appearing, even when I’d already been through a section earlier.  It warmed up into the low fifties, feeling even warmer in the Sun, but even at 15:00 there could be found patches of last night’s frost in shady spots.  It’s a lesson in geologic time here as you can see the various stages of the erosion of these fantastic formations, from full fledged dikes, pillars and mushrooms, to the lumped remnant of the softer rock about knee high with the mushroom capstone lying close by, or even still upon it.  There are also formations like several columns in a row, resembling Egyptian columns, rather than Roman Arches, but some of these rows stood like a broken Roman aqueduct, such as I have seen in a painting by Corot, from his time spent in Rome as a young man; but of course with Egyptian columns.

Egyptian Aqueduct?

As I wandered around, I wondered what it is about this place that kept me on an all day photo-recon in what is, after all, a quite limited area.  And at first glance it is reminiscent of an old abandoned quarry, or a stony gravel pit, albeit with weird formations.  It does not have the grandeur of the fins of Arches NP, or the Needles of Canyonlands NP, but that is just it; Recapture Pocket is a more personal space … a more human scale, and for all that, more accessible.  By the way, I still haven’t found out why it is called Recapture Pocket.

Mushroom Remnant.

The vegetation is sparse, but there is life here; rabbits … I saw their tracks; probably coyotes, and the odd Raven and birds of prey … no doubt rodents as well.  I came across a possible rabbit snatch, or maybe an attempt.  There were two claw marks in the sand, and a rabbit track just in front.  These were like a bird of prey had missed his rabbit, leaving a pair of talon tracks in the sand, but since there was only one set of four rabbit paw prints, perhaps the raptor got him on the way up as he recovered from his miss.  There were no other tracks in the area.  The rabbit tracks were quite deep, as though he was getting traction after spotting the incoming bird.  Perhaps he escaped, as I did notice in my own tracks that the sand changed hardness from one area to the next, sometimes leaving a deep track and the next a light impression.  With a rabbit after the first startled imprint, the following footsteps might not have left an impression; but I lean towards the successful hunt on the upwards recovery … I’ll never know.

Kill Site, or did the Rabbit getaway?

The Pigments used in the painting:

Imprimatura: Rublev Ercolano Red;

No Drawing

Pigments: W&N Cerulean, Cobalt & Ultramarine Deep Blues, Cadmiums Yellow Pale and Orange;

Rublev: Ercolano Red, Purple Ochre, Lead White #2.