Nightfall, Springer NM

I was returning from delivering paintings to Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, Oklahoma and took the back way home, as I often do. I drove through Springer, New Mexico just as night was falling and was struck by the mood there. I walked around taking photographs for a while as the light faded, then headed home in the dark. This painting is from that evening.I ended up painting it twice, as the first painting was destroyed in a van fire on my way to Cherry Creek Art Festival on Labor Day of last year.

This is just setting it up. The sky has a first pass of graduated blues, and the foreground is sketched in with pencil and marker.

This is pretty ghastly, but things will settle down later on. The clouds are roughed in, and the base color of the old building are in now, as well as some scumbling of the foreground road.

Still ghastly, but a little better. Some of the warm light on the building has been added, and the background has a little work added, as well as the foreground road.

More sense of light now. The streetlight pole and the wires have been added, and some light and shadow on the main building as well as more work on the other buildings.

Here’s the final of the first version. Everything has been touched again and things sit more in the same world now.

Months later, here is the second version. I’m sure if I painted it a few more times it would improve! This is with Leslie Levy Fine Art in Scottsdale, Arizona.

4 thoughts on “Nightfall, Springer NM”

I had to laugh that you described 2 states of this painting as “ghastly”.
Do you know that ghastly is primarily used to describe horrible things . . . horrible!!
Anyway, jk–I appreciate seeing your steps to completion as well as your ghastly descriptions! (heh heh). Beautiful light and I am so glad you took the back way home./

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March 14, 2022 at 2:08 pm Reply