The Art of R. Geoffrey Blackburn

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Why I do Western Landscape and Red Rock Paintings:

"I have always been fascinated by the incredible diversity and often unearthly beauty of the western United States.  I have hiked over various Western mountains and deserts prospecting for gold, silver and uranium. I have also been a ski racer and a ski instructor and so I am enamored with both alpine and desert landscapes in all seasons. Some of my earliest  paintings were of lakes and mountains, prospectors, cowboys and skiers (the latter, usually rendered in electric colors). But when I first visited Moab, Canyonlands and Arches (in Utah), I was truly smitten–artistic juices flowing! The geological marvels I encountered there just blew me away! I could have been on another planet! From that point on, Western landscape paintings particularly, red rock paintings have dominated my art.  While my friends were wearing suits hunkered down in offices, I was lucky enough to spend more than a decade prospecting and exploring this or that Western landscape and of course, also producing paintings of many of the scenes I prospected .

Even as Al Dart, my business partner and I trekked the outback prospecting, drilling, staking claims and doing deals, I also continued with my art, sketching and photographing along the way.  Between forays to our various properties I would return to my studio and create paintings.  If I had a thousand life times, I could never begin to paint even a fraction of the wonders I have seen. I was so inspired, that along with the numerous Western landscape paintings I produced, I even created and patented a new user-interactive art form/medium. This, in an effort to find yet another way to capture some of the amazing Western landscapes I had experienced. These earliest efforts focused on red rock themes-incorporating imagery inspired by from some of my red rock paintings. Since the late 1970's I have focused almost entirely on creating Western landscape paintings with a strong emphasis on desert and red rock canyon landscapes from around the Moab area. This area is very special to me as it is where so much of our mining property was located and our operations were based. In the last several years I have widened my focus to create landscape paintings of other Western vistas in Arizona and Wyoming. 
 
In my paintings, I try to create a scene the way you might remember it as opposed to the way it really is. I want you to be able to go into the scene and explore the various spaces–to feel like you are actually there. I want you to see something new every time you look at one of my paintings. The tight detail in my work makes this possible. With looser more "painterly" work, you are stopped at the surface of the painting. I tend to use a lot of glazes that is to say, I paint "thin"– using very little paint, layering thin transparent colors on top of each other to achieve the desired effect. This approach lets you look into the paint.

I'm a geezer now, so there won't be many more Western landscape paintings flowing out of my brush.  As of this writing, I am currently working on the last five of what I had planned on being my last six red rock paintings.  Twilight on the Colorado was the first of this last set of red rock landscape paintings completed in Dec. 2013, all started the same week in November 2012.  Since it usually takes hundreds of hours to complete one of my paintings it will be no surprise that I don't expect to have the last of them done until late 2015.  As I am painting them in rotation- a week or two on this one and then on to the next one and so on, they are all well on the way. After this, I am hoping to explore some other subjects and do some less traditional figurative paintings (unleashing my inner surrealist persona) and get back to working in my "new art form".  Along the way, I will also be working on my book, "How" , basically, a creative primer—a step-by-step guide on how to create literally anything.  Stay tuned...."

R. Geoffrey Blackburn