In the time of dinosaurs (150 million years ago) there lived the ancestors of the modern butterflies called Lacewings. When the impression of a Lacewing was discovered pressed into stone the finder/scientist cleverly took tiny bits of the stone and ground it up to examine it and determine the color of the eye spot and wings. Here is my imagined re-creation of the lacewing based on his findings along with a photo of the Red Admiral butterfly currently seen in the Rio Grande Valley.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Dinosaur Butterflies
Posted in Uncategorized on January 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Done!
Posted in Botanicals, My Paintings, Sierra Nevada Natural History, Uncategorized, tagged Beetles, California Buckeye, Reeds on July 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Done! Finished! They say only the painter can tell when a painting is finished … well … for me that moment occurs when I am heartily sick of looking at the #*%$* painting. So here they are.
D.L. and I scouted up and down a remote country road in order to find the California Buckeye Tree … pinched off some leaves which were rapidly turning brown and beginning to drop. This native tree has a clever strategy to defeat the dry, dry summer. When the hills become parched in June or July it drops all of its leaves and concentrates of developing its seed pod. The crispy leaves are graham-cracker colored – the seed pods are enclosed in a leathery yellowish covering which splits as the summer progresses and releases the glossy orange/brown seeds. The seeds are spectacular !
Painting 2 is a fantasy of the iridescent beetles emerging from a pot … a sort-of still life with drapes and two umbrellas.
Painting 3 is a flowering reed which grows around ponds in the California foothills. In order to see the blossoms you must kneel in the soggy soil and look close … and it must be in the two weeks the reeds put out their peculiar flowers.
O.K. ….Tha … that’s all for now folks! … as my favorite roadrunner says.