Afternoon Showers original pastel

Deep blue rain clouds are a welcome sight on high desert ranches. The broken light colors the mountains and the yellow ochre and russet grasses. I did this painting on location outside my Davis Mountains studio in Far West Texas.

I wanted to capture the movement of the layered clouds over the rolling grassland before the much welcomed rain flattened them. This is a very richly colored painting, just like the landscape it came from.

After several years of drought in the high country, these afternoon storms building outside my studio were a welcome sight. I quickly tried to capture the light weaving through the rapidly changing cloud layers.