51.  Original Plein Air Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, 12-1:10pm, Humphrey's Peak, Flagstaff, Rain, 5.14.24”, watercolor, 22 x 30”, 2024

Location: Flagstaff, AZ

Event: ArtX Flagstaff

My time in Flagstaff for the inaugural ArtX Flagstaff art festival was split between two different airbnb’s.  This piece is from the second location.  I was now looking back at Humphrey’s peak, where I had stayed for the first week, from a prairie house at 7000 feet of elevation, coming down about 1000 feet from the first lodging.  It was a rainy midday, but the rain hadn’t reached the plain yet, only the mountain, and a window of brilliant blue sky was visible just under the clouds in the upper right of this picture.  The black texture in the foregound is the ubiquitous volcanic cinder rocks that litter the Flagstaff landscape.  Humphrey’s peak used to be one enormous volcano reaching 14,000 feet, blown apart into separate peaks a very long time ago.  The earth is iron-rich orange, the grasses faded green and yellow, the mountain blue through distant rain, with plenty of snow still gathered up high.  When the rain reached the porch where I was painting, conveniently I was able to move inside, and continue my plein air piece looking through the window in the kitchen door.  It was during this painting that I first felt the urge to climb or walk to the top of Humphrey’s, which I (almost) completed a bit later in the festival.