By
Rick Woods
Piece description from the artist
Most evenings as the sun dips below the Sierra Nevada to our west, we get to see the shadow line sweep up the cottonwood and willow out back to our east. Here in Sparks, Nevada, our evenings are clear more often than not. This was a painting that had been nudging my imagination for attention for years.
It finally came to full froth, fueled by the simple pleasure of sharing a beer with a neighbor in lawn chairs out by his workshop. He noticed I wasn't paying proper attention to the current topic of conversation – no idea what that was – rather my attention was captivated by that sun and shadow line creeping up the trees and raking across the hills.
I set out to capture that sense of evening peace, when the quail are settling in for the night, the afternoon wind has died and the scent of sun warmed sage settles down to the ground.
I set it up as an oil on a clayboard panel, working from top to bottom, background to foreground and then restating some areas as needed. That blazing gold took a few passes to really pop properly. The sky didn't work as a smooth gradation, so I reworked it as a scumbled mosaic that better matched the brushwork in the foreground.
He said, "I have always been an artist. All my life I’ve gotten these urges to draw what I imagine, these ideas as images that come upon me when I’m daydreaming about something else. A quick sketch may be all that happens for the moment, but some I’ve actually gotten around to bringing to reality. Some of my best work was a re-creation of one of these images that I could see so clearly. Sometimes a sketch is much better than words."
Rick is a Washington State native, with high school in Concord, Calif., and fine arts training at CSU Chico, Indiana University, South Bend and University of Nevada, Reno.
He has worked as a magazine editor, a freelance writer, illustrator, designer, photographer. He's also been a search and rescue air crewman, electronics tech., carpenter, sign painter/exhibit builder, and lots of other stuff, some that made a living and others that didn’t. He's worked primarily in watercolor all his life, and lately some success in oils and acrylics. He
s experimented with silkscreen and lithography, and with assemblage and collage too.
HIs second grade teacher apologized that she couldn’t get him to do much else but draw. He took a third place award as a high school sophomore in the Concord Art Association’s 1967 Annual show. He graduated from high school with the departmental arts award, earned a regional place in the national Hallmark high school competition. His work is in collections in the US Air Force Command HQ, Anchorage, Alaska, Indiana University, South Bend, US Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington DC, and many private collections. His first solo show was in Elizabeth City, N.C., in 1988.
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