These are some new paintings I recently completed as part of my Black Canyon National Park series. I’ve been painting for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park for several years now. They sell my prints and note cards at the visitors center located in the park. Four of the paintings are watercolors and four of them are oil paintings. You can look in the gallery listings to find out more information on each of them.

Probably ten years ago I was asked by the concessionaire at the visitors center to come up and do some paintings of the park and if I’d make some prints and note cards of the images they would buy them from me to sell in the gift shop. Since then I have had a very enjoyable relationship with the park. They currently own several of my paintings. Since that beginning I went on to do some paints and prints of Capitol Reef National Park in Utah as well as The Colorado National Monument out of Grand Junction Colorado.

As a landscape painter, I have found the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to be very interesting if not very difficult to paint. There is a lot of up and down in that canyon as one would expect and the light on the side walls is constantly changing as the sun moves from morning to evening. Throw in some summer time thunder clouds and the changes are even more dramatic. Speaking of dramatic, this is a most impressive place and the views are phenomenal. They say that it is the narrowest and deepest canyon in North America.

Initially I spent a whole week camping at the park, hiking out to each overlook so that I could grasp it’s entirety which I soon realized would take more than just a week. It was three days before I even began painting there was so much to take in. Since then I have gone back many times to take in this natural wonder. The above paintings are recent attempts to capture this gem of a park.

You can go here to find out more.