Oil on Gaia, a Canvas

Sunday, August 22


Oil on Gaia, a canvas


Imagine walking in a painting, oil on canvas. You are flowing through freshly brushed oil on a world renowned painting. A feeling frequently comes over me that I am participating and viewing the creation of a masterpiece, but instead of canvas, the oil is applied to earth, our Gaia.


As I walk through beautiful landscapes the colors and textures pleasing my eyes give me thoughts of the thick viscous oil built up in layers of artistic masterpieces. I feel as if I am part of nature’s oil painting on Gaia.


The built up subtle red, brown and gray mountains, the flat wide open muted yellow spaces give way to the open majestic blue skies. When looking down at the red earth there is fine speckled texture of sand grains co-painted with the light brown pine needles. I keep thinking about the layer open layer of oil and the techniques used in the application of this creation I walk within.


Oil on Gaia is an artwork that is yet to dry, and may never dry because of its constant change. A light green oil, then a vibrant green oil alternate in a background of eggshell blue and dove white oil creating the flutter of the Aspen leaf in a light breeze against the sky.


The changing plants through their lifecycle, growing trees, to ants building mounds out of tiny multi colored pebbles requires oils of so many colors it can only come from a rainbow mixing as it streams onto the pallet of the artist, the creator. The artist is always busy applying oil, for deer hooves are impressed into the earth with darker browns. The lightest application of brown oil provides the lofted look to an earthen Moles pile pushed up, as the most beautiful topsoil that every gardener would loves. Streaks of brown oil and gray oil meld to create the texture of the ponderosa pine tree.


The blue oil and clear oil are mixed just right to form the sky, wind in the air or mixed together as they swirl about the inside of you, breathing in freshness, leaving your body ready to be mixed with fresh blues and clears to from a breeze again.


The red sunsets of oil mix with the darkness of the trickster crow, creating the night. Holes in the night are created by the splash of sparkly oil creating the stars only to be erased by a solid steam of the moon pouring white oil into the night. The twinkling stars, and moons streak of white and their accompanying trickster black of the crow, the night are whipped away again with a layer of oil rising in the East in hues of pink creating another Gaia canvas for the day.


Over the summer the green oil changes to every color of green imaginable as the chlorophyll in the oil grew and developed into darker and deeper hughes and as the summer passed on, the lighter hues of green returned. The green grassy oil was slowly covered with beautiful tones of yellow oil on earth.


The painting of the earth itself revealed colors of reds and browns and purples. The oil revealed previous life forms that have been buried for eons in the form of blacks and charcoals. The oil under the foot dries quickly creating a crunchy sound of crunch crunch crunch for hours on end day after day as I walk through the painting.


Walking through this magnificent painting of oil on Gaia just makes me smile because when the oil on Gaia reaches my peripheral vision it fades behind my head all the oils blend back together into a rainbow of memories, a masterpiece in my mind.


The Four Corners Loop is a majestic work of art!