Blog

Each September, the Steamboat Springs Art Museum Plein Air Event gathers artists who seek to capture the shifting light and living color of Colorado’s high country. This year, I found myself along the quiet banks of the Yampa River, brush in hand, as the first cool breeze of fall whispered through the aspens. The painting that emerged, “One More Day of Summer,” is my reflection on that moment — the river’s gentle rhythm, the warm glow lingering on the hillsides, and the tender balance between seasons. In the stillness, it felt as though summer was offering a final, golden breath before yielding to autumn’s brilliance. There’s a kind of gratitude in that transition, a reminder that beauty often lives in the spaces between change. You can view this new work and others inspired by the Colorado landscape at DouglasHemlerFineArt.com.

March 2021 was a great month. I had the opportunity to travel west to take Bill Davidson's Carmel Workshop. I stopped in Green River, Utah and met the great people running the John Wesley Powell Museum. They recommended several great places to paint along the river. The Green is one of the great tributaries of the Colorado River. Powell began his journey in Green River, Wyoming. While I traveled I listened to Wallace Stegnar's Beyond the 100th Meridian. Powell's journey was one of measured risk. By using science, skill, and his sense of adventure he opened up the American Southwest. Even today, the Colorado River Basin is extremely remote, challenging, beautiful, and essential. 

In California I had the opportunity to paint at Carmel Beach with another great artist, Ellen Howard, before Bill's workshop began.  Ellen is a wonderful artist and teacher. Painting with Ellen and then with Bill in the same week was really a great experience. Both artists truly love and understand the Monterey Peninsula. Carmel, as always, was magnificent. How bad can life be when you get to 'go to work' at Garrapata Beach and China Cove! 

In two weeks I traveled I-70, I-40, I-25 and some really great side roads, saw some of the best of the west, and painted with some real superstars!

Recently I had the good fortune to paint with a group of great artists in Northern Arizona at the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, also home to Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River. While walking the bank of the river I was struck by the clear green water as it flowed by. It reminded me of another one of my favorite places in the West, the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River, in Teton National Park which also has this beautiful green water. I realized that both areas share a common feature, a dam not too many miles upstream. The dams filter the sediments and for a few miles the water runs crystal clear, picking up the colors of the land, sky, and river bottom. Warm or cool, based on the season, light and time of day. Sometimes almost pure viridian and other times closer to blue or yellow-green. Truly fun waters to paint!

In the case of the Colorado, for most of it's course it is carrying a hefty amount of sediment and is more typically milky brown or green, parts of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, now mostly deposited in the basins of Lakes Powell and Mead. I have seen the Snake as both clear and clean and also more brown depending on the time of year and run rate. The west we live in is both natural and open and yet also touched by human hands, even in the most remote of locations. These scenes still remain wonderful and beautiful but they are different than they were 150 years ago. In the case of the rivers, they are the oasis of our lands (Wallace Stegner), nurturing us and our homes. In all cases, fragile and powerful at the same time, subject to the whims of nature, weakened by drought, powered and strengthened by the winter snows.

This fall and winter I have been exploring the roads between Golden and Phoenix and keep finding my way back to Sand Island near Bluff. Between the river and the petroglyphs this area always gets me thinking about the confluence of history in the West over the past 150 years or so. The San Juan River at Sand Island looks really natural belying its transition over the past 150 years. It sits on the border of the Navaho Nation and the more developed lands of Southest Utah. It serves farmers, drains the southwest slope of Colorado and merges with the Colorado, now in Lake Powell. Up river, it is controlled by two separate dams. Downriver, after winding through the Goosenecks, it ends its way in a reservoir created by one of the biggest dams, Glen Canyon. So, its natural look and appearance is really a significant effort in conservation and balance. As always, water and the West go hand in hand. Sand Island really has a great feeling about it. Standing near the Petroglyph Wall it is not hard to place yourself back hundreds and even thousands of years. The site feels warm and nurturing, a place of refuge and restoration.