LISA DARIA'S PAINTING A DAY PROJECT: August 2019

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

3731 Colorado Mini Travel Guide

sold still life, acrylic, 6" x 6"

Colorado, Mini Travel Guide

Before last week, the biggest mountain I’ve ever seen - note seen, not climbed or even driven to the top of - is Mount Washington, NH 6,000 ft. The highest peak I’ve ever scaled, a mere 4000 feet, mind you, in a leisurely day hike to the Lunch Rocks at Tuckerman’s Ravine. So, in essence, I walked to eat lunch, sort of high up once. But last week I taught at Art Makers in Denver at CU’s School of Architecture and from our sixth floor studio, across the Mile High City, we could see the very, very (very) big mountains, double in size to what I’ve seen here in New England.

The week began with three days of workshops with enthusiastic and upbeat painters from all over like, Iowa, Colorado, and California. The first day we talked about daily painting, the second bright color and the third how to paint quickly, without fussing and noodling. Art Makers is an annual event that hosts several instructors from all over to teach daily classes. Participants have a choice of sampling the teachings of anyone or stay with the same instructor. Each day ended with Happy Hour and we had communal lunches too. The event happens next year at the end of July on the 24th, 25th, 26th and I’m excited to go back. The logistics are easy, there’s tons of hotels within walking distance and the airport connects with the subway and the downtown, so no rental car is needed and there’s plenty of places to scoot off to after class for dinner and art viewing.

In addition to the workshop, I gallery and museum hopped with my artist friend Diane Cionni - we saw a retrospective of Colorado’s Clark Richert’s work and I learned about Drop City, a communal artist dome colony from the late 1960's. Friday night, I attended an Arts Walk in the Santa Fe District and after the workshop was over, I headed higher up via Boulder with artist friend, Kim Putnam, where we checked out another retrospect of Richert’s work. Art viewing aside, we then headed to Estes Park - a valley in the midst of 14,000 feet peaks. And as you now know, from my aforementioned confession, I have never seen anything like it. I thought the foothills outside of Boulder were big, but Estes Park reached an ‘are you kidding me with the size of these things,’ status. For this little sea creature, the difference in altitude and scale is really noticeable, as I’ve been living under the sea here In MA all my life, like a mermaid, or a crab (or maybe a pearl?). My fight or flight drive kicked in and since I couldn't take flight (no wings) to a lower altitude, we continued. After depleting the local Circle K of all its Dramamine, I was good to go, not to the top of one of the 14ers, but comfortably to the veranda of the Shining's Stanley Hotel.