Howdy folks! Here’s a new background for November:

This photo is from Sacramento’s stretch of the American River. I added some bits of foliage from the trees in my neighborhood. Hope you like! Click one of the following links to download: 2880×1800, 2560×1600, 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1440×900, 1280×800.

I’ve been painting in Sacramento lately—specifically near the American River just West of Lake Natomas. I made these four paintings in a row over the last four weeks. Click on the images in the post to view them full-sized.

“Curragh Downs”
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 11 inches
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Mom brought home an owl last week. He was in a plastic bag, covered in salt, two days dead and starting to smell a little. His right eye had been pecked out and some maggots had already found their way into the socket. He was beautiful still, large and long and peaceful, with wings that unfolded to impossible dimensions and two horns made from specially perky little feathers.

We laid him in a box and endeavored to cut off his wings. We put on blue plastic gloves and tried first with short-nosed garden shears, or “loppers”. I held the wing outstretched and found where the wing bone met the shoulder joint and Mom moved the loppers into position and pulled the handles together. The bone gave way but the wing held on securely with a wide layer of skin and feather. I tried to keep the owl’s body relatively still as I felt for the skin and stretched it for Mom to move in again with the loppers, but they wouldn’t cut it and we stopped.

I stroked his feathers and we decided that the Buck knife was the best option, although Mom was a bit apprehensive as it’s used in the kitchen (to cut open chickens for barbecuing, among other things). I knelt by the owl and waited for Mom to get back with the knife and brushed salt off his face and looked at his big already-stiff yellow feet and thought how he seemed at once so big and so small.

The Buck knife cut through the skin easily and we made short work of the other one and I tried to keep moving quickly and assuredly although as we moved to his left wing I thought about him being wingless and dead in a box and it made me very sad.