Moyen Atlas Color Study

When our kids were small I didn’t have time to sketch when we were traveling, but I could take notes of the colors I saw in a small notebook –everything from laundry lines, to bird plumage, to colors on a wall — and then I would lay down studies after they were in bed. This was the most effective visual journal I could muster and it turned into a valuable tool to increase my color literacy. We all register the impact of landscape in many different ways and mine begins with color. I finally realized these notations, these studies, are maps of a sort. This map is to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco as a watercolor painting. 2015.

Alexander McCall Smith said it well: Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day.

Original watercolor on watercolor paper, unframed.

The piece: 7.5 x 13.5 inches