Carl Judson - Guerrilla Painter Notebook

Painting Nevada

I’m a retired rancher who grew up
in the west of the ‘40s and ‘50s, and no western state dredges up the feelings from those bygone days for me like Nevada does, so I’m always chompin’ at the bit whenever the prospect of roaming and painting the byways of that great state crops up (and getting to and from Nevada isn’t too shabby either). A recent business trip to the west coast had me budgeting some extra painting and roaming time.

I can’t quite put my finger on what type of scene evokes the kind of emotional response that will make me swerve over and start painting, but like the Supreme Court, “I know it when I see it.” My first U-turn was triggered by this abandoned gas station (below) on the old main drag going west out of Elko.

Out of Gas at Metro Gas
Elko, NV
Carl Judson © 2005
Oil on oil-primed linen, 7½" x 10".

Farther along this abandoned truck stop (above right) at the junction of I-80 and US 93 caused my next “one-eighty.” The sign by the highway said “OPEN” and

pronounced the long-closed Trinity Truck Stop as the “Friendliest Truck Stop”—a real Stephen King setting.

The Friendliest Truck Stop
I80 & US 93, NV
Carl Judson © 2005
Oil on oil-primed linen, 7½" x 10".

On the return trip, I wandered off into Antelope Valley. The hot, “high-noon” washed out landscape (below) contrasted with the dark doorways of the giant shop building. I didn’t inquire, but I think the shop was for housing and servicing the ranch’s semi-trucks used to haul the hay raised in this remote desert oasis hundreds of miles to market.

Ranch, Antelope Valley, NV
Carl Judson © 2005
Oil on oil-primed linen, 7½" x 10".

The next day found me just over the border in the withering landscape of northwestern Utah. Even here you find ranches – under the right conditions good ranchers can make a go of it in country that would make a rattlesnake think twice. Desolation piled on top of desolation, like this burned over landscape (below), is not out of place in this biblical “Job” country, notorious for plagues of locusts and salt flats.

I went looking for the old Stewart homestead in the Uintah Mountains
south of Fort Bridger, Wyoming (from Elinore Stewart’s Letters of a Woman Homesteader and the movie Heartland) and came upon this scene of a fall round-up over the line in Utah (above right). I used to run cattle in this kind of country. There is nothing like working horseback on an Indian summer day in the mountains with the aspens in full color. At the extreme right is a “cattle pot” backed up to a temporary corral and loading chute.

As I was painting I could hear the
cows and calves bawling in the woods as they were being driven to be sorted and loaded…and I got to use my fluorescent oil pastels.
These paintings were painted sitting in my car using a Guerrilla
ThumBox™ and a Slip-In Easel™. I
squeezed out plenty of paint before I left so I didn’t need to take any paint tubes with me. The paint kept just fine for over a week.