I always thought this woman had a glow to her, and this proves it. Inside the big restored kiva at Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico.

But along with that bit of cheesecake, we just returned from a site visit to El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico – 340,000 acres, 400 caves, lava flows and sandstone cliffs. Go there and hear the blood rushing in your ears it’s so quiet! I simply love being taken around to see ‘the best stuff’ on these painting site visits, getting an advanced understanding of an amazing place from the pros.  This time it was a park I’ve never been to, even more amazing.

Here is one of the caves, ceiling collapsed to expose that amazing New Mexico sun and all of us geared up with caving stuff. We went a very long way back into the blackness, but some of these caves are many miles long and even several stories.

Here we sat as the sun set, waiting for the bat flight from another cave. I’d have sat here forever, in the eyelash grass, bats or not, and watched the stars appear, surrounded by miles of no one but the mountain lions and elk. This is a vast place with relatively few people.

In a couple of days, I did enough drawings to get a grasp of what this painting will become.  I presented them with the half-dozen best. This one was drawn while in the car, driven by Ranger Mandi Toy from Grand Canyon, North Rim – and over a washboard road that simulated a carnival ride. She did a great job keeping it on the road – I did a passable job at the basic layout that held through almost a dozen drawings. First one’s usually THE one!

The sketch below is coming close to the idea. This is going to be the back of the new park map, similar to others I’ve done like this, a grand and complicated college of nature. Four main themes are here, the lava caves, sandstone cliffs, giant lava flows and the distant and vast vistas we saw everywhere. You can see so far around here that we often said “how far IS that mountain in the distance?”  Also going in the painting will be cultural remains of a pueblo – some rock walls and pot shards. They leave it pretty much open to my ideas and passions. I just get to paint!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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