musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
celebrating grace: their wings fill my heart with prayer ~ crane painting, iii







Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post! Also, I invite you to discover more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes — and of course here on my website, www.taosdawn.com Blessings ~ Dawn Chandler


painting process: the aspen pillars of my cathedral
Yesterday a friend shared with me that she’s recently taken up painting, and that she’s “learning and loving it.” (how cool is THAT?!) She further revealed that she’d really like to shadow me at my easel — and that reminded me that over the past few months I’ve taken “process” pics of paintings I’m working on, but I’ve yet to share them.
So I thought I’d do that now, and since I’ve been a bit infatuated by aspen trees (obvious to anyone who has been following my Dawn Chandler Fine Art FaceBook page lately) I’ll start with a little painting called The Aspen Pillars of My Cathedral, the finished painting featured in my most recent edition of my Inside the Studio newsletter** .
Here we go!
This cluster of photos below — all taken during the course of my painting session — gives you a sense of the challenge I faced when I sat down in the aspen forest early that September morning. Although none of these is precisely the view I painted, they give a sense of the constantly shifting light, color, and endlessly repeated shapes of the aspen forest. ‘Pretty easy for a painter to be intimidated and overwhelmed!
The key then is to simplify: Find something to focus on, and ignore ‘most everything else.
Now, on to painting! Note that I’m using a pure white panel, which is unusual for me. Normally I like to stain my panels (as I explain here). But when I gathered up my paints in the wee predawn hours of the morning, I had no stained panels, no time to stain new ones, and so decided “screw it — I’ll use a white one.” Usually I avoid using a pure white panel or canvas, just because it’s so blindingly and intimidatingly pristine.
I started by putting in most of the lightest colors first — which is also against my usual tendency to “block in the darkest darks” first. But this scene is so much about the light through the leaves, that I wanted their bright color to radiate and not get mucked up with darks.
Then I focused on the cool bluey-purple-grey backdrop of the distant mountains peeking through the trees…
Then, the foreground lights….
…and mid-ground shadows, noting that while they were a similar bluey-purple-grey of the distant mountains, they were a darker shade.
Note, too, that the contrast of light vs shadow here is also a contrast of colors: Yellow & purple are opposites on the color wheel, and therefore compliments. Mother Nature knows what she’s doing when it comes to dazzling color by pairing these together.
Now to break up that big band of mid-ground shadow with a suggestion of the many aspen trunks and bits of light peeking through. I definitely didn’t want to paint every single aspen tree — that would be distracting and make the painting much too cluttered and busy. Rather, by painting just a few, I suggested many.
NOW things started to get interesting. For the focus of this painting was to be the aspens in the foreground — which at this point I hadn’t even added to the composition yet!
Normally right from the beginning I would have sketched in at least the shapes of their trunks and worked around them. But that just seemed kind of tedious. So I tried something a bit daring, and with a brush wet with solvent (Gamsol), I simply washed out the paint where I wanted to place the foreground aspens. I did this initially by dipping a clean brush in Gamsol, getting it good and wet with the solvent, and then wiping away/removing the paint from where I wanted to place the larger foreground aspen trunks.
After brushing the trunk areas with solvent I went in with paper towel and wiped the trunk areas, removing even more paint.
Once I wiped out the underlying paint, I went in with fresh paint to build up the foreground aspen trunks, all of which by this time of day were mainly in shadow.
The perpetual challenge when painting aspens, of course, is trying to ascertain what color the trunks are — especially when they are in shadow. Although we think of aspen tree trunks as pure white, in reality they rarely are. Indeed, since the trunks photosynthesize, often they are tan or muted green. All of them though, because they are light-colored — especially the “white” ones — reflect all of the colors of the forest around them, making them in reality a myriad of colors.
(With a shadow cast across my painting, it appears below much darker than it really is — yet another challenge of plein air painting!)
At this point the painting was really coming together, and I got so absorbed with painting that I forgot to keep taking photos of the changes!
(Have you been paying attention to what’s happening on my palette? For I delight in the transformation of the colors on my palette as much as the transformation of the painting!)
I decided I needed to push the background further back, so I lightened the distant purples a bit more, as well as muddled the distant and mid-range foliage a bit, once again thinking about giving the suggestion of forms and space rather than getting caught up in details.
Occasional details though — added at the very end — really help make a painting sing. So a few distinct leaves and bright highlights on the tree trunks go a long way in adding to the sense of light — as well as visual interest.
Et voila! The final result! You can see that the painting really isn’t dark at all like it appears in the last couple photos above. Although I kind of like the drama of the painting in the photos above, in reality the painting radiates much more light than those would suggest. Turns out the white of the panel adds a lovely underlying glow to the painting.
The Aspen Pillars of My Cathedral ~ by Dawn Chandler
oil on panel ~ en plein air ~ 5″ x 7″
This painting is available here.
** Gratitude to all you Inside the Studio subscribers out there!
Thanks so much for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
Also, I invite you to discover more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes — and of course here on my website, www.taosdawn.com
Warmly ~
Dawn Chandler
saturday grace: secretly, joyfully, clearly ~ crane painting, ii
I was cruising along on I-25 and had just crossed back into New Mexico when somewhere between Raton and Springer something way overhead caught my eye:
Wait… what is that?
Dozens and dozens of birds, gliding at an impossible altitude.
What ARE they?….
I had never seen anything like them before.
in my astonishment I had to pull over, get out of my car, and just watch them.
Yet what was most astonishing of all?
No one else pulled over. No one else even appeared to look up, to notice them. Cars and trucks and 18-wheelers and RVs and SUVS and sports cars all whizzed by with passengers looking anywhere by up.
Do they not see this? Are they not astonished?
Or was this a common — and therefore tired — sight for everyone but me?
Not likely.
I think mostly these beings went unseen — as do, alas, so many of our fellow souls.
This was to me my very first encounter with the sandhill cranes and it occurred one autumn some seven or eight years ago when I knew absolutely nothing about them. And though it would be a few more years before i would encounter the cranes in such a way that I would become forever besotted with them, I’ve never forgotten this first crane spotting experience out on I-25.
Now, come mid-Autumn, I know to listen and to look for them…. as My Good Man and I did a couple of weeks ago, driving up through southern Colorado, west of Alamosa. There we delightedly heard, then saw, some of our New Mexico cranes resting on their journey home….
How about you?
Have you ever heard the cranes — or even geese — and looked to the sky with pure hope and joy and wondered,
where are they. . .
I hear them!
but where are they?
And then!
And then have had your heart leap as you spot them, their silhouettes sharpening and fading in and out of sunlight and cloud light as they catch an invisible current and glide, or as with the geese, their winged chevron waves across the sky ….
This small painting — Secretly, Joyfully, Clearly — celebrates that moment of hearing the cranes and geese, and searching the sky for the source of their song . And then that brilliant moment of discernment, before they fade into the sky once more…..

Secretly, Joyfully, Clearly
Maybe no one expresses that moment better than Mary Oliver….
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.
Mary Oliver, Snow Geese
Secretly, Joyfully, Clearly by Dawn Chandler
mixed-media on panel ~ 8″ x 8″
This painting is available here.
Read about my other crane paintings ~
new for you each saturday morning ~ honoring grace
Thanks so much for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
Also, I invite you to discover more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes — and of course here on my website, www.taosdawn.com
With gratitude ~
Dawn Chandler
new for you, each saturday morning ~ honoring grace
One of my great joys in recent years has been observing, learning about, and following Grus canadensis — the Sandhill cranes. I’ve written a good deal about these beautiful beings — here and here — and how I’ve come to love them. Some people feel a kinship to certain animals, and view those beings as their “spirit animals.” The crane is surely one of my spirit animals. And the more I observe and bear witness to their astonishing grace and majesty, the more I am awed.
What a good thing in this often ugly world, to be awed by beauty.

sunset sandhill cranes heading out to their evening roost ~ bosque del apache ~ winter 2017 ~ photo by dawn chandler
But how to express this?
I’m not sure my words can convey enough.
And so I turn to art — to painting, with the hope that somehow my muse will allow me to express something of the awe and joy and magnificence I experience when witnessing and thinking about these extraordinarily beautiful beings. To express this infatuation, I’ve returned to my creative collaging instinct, combining papers & ink & paint & imagery to create a series of semi-figurative, semi-abstract landscape-rooted paintings. These paintings are a bit different from what some of my newer followers may be used to seeing from me. But if you look back at my oeuvre over the years, you’ll see that these kinds of paintings are of a style that’s quite familiar.
Anyhow, over the next many Saturdays, I will be dedicating my Blog here to sharing my new crane paintings with the world.
The timing is good — feels right. For this Saturday in mid October our New Mexico cranes are making their way home again. Soon — come mid November — they will be home for the winter, at our beloved Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. And you can be sure I will be there just as often as I can, standing silently, watching, while my heart pounds with delight and awe.
But today — this Saturday morning —— here: The first of my crane paintings: Never Have I Seen Grace Like This.

‘never have I seen grace like this” ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 10″ x 20″
And now some details….
The writing & text come from my own musings… the pages of my journals, and stream of consciousness written on the papers collaged into the painting….
You’ll be seeing more of this figure in future paintings… Eventually I’ll share their story…. It’s a good one. 🙂

‘never have I seen grace like this” ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 10″ x 20″
Never Have I Seen Grace Like This is available here..
Thanks a bunch for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
Also, I invite you to discover more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes.
Very Artfully Yours ~
Dawn Chandler
under the spell of new mexico gold
Something magical has been spreading across New Mexico this September… I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
And I’m not the only one stunned by it. I go out each evening to walk and find, despite distressing world news, I’m smiling. And there’s many more people out there on my walks, and they’re smiling, too. It’s as if we can’t help ourselves — which, in fact, we can’t.
We are under the spell of gold — gold coins.
Coins made up of pistils, stamens, and soft jagged petals.
Coins scattered densely across seemingly every field, empty lot and fence row in Santa Fe County. Coins known in Latin circles as Verbesina encelioides.
I’m talking about Golden Crownbeard.
Also known as the Cowpen Daisy.
…. or American Dogweed…
…and Butter Daisy….
…or South African Daisy….
… and Gold Weed….
… and Wild Sunflower.
To me, they’re known as the OMG-I-Can’t-Believe-How-Gorgeous-Those-Golden-Flowers-Are-What-The-Heck-Are-They-They-Are-So-Incredibly-Beautiful-I-ve-Never-Seen-Fields-of-Gold-Like-That-I-Just-Can’t-Get-Enough-Of-Them.
My neighborhood nursery Plants of the Southwest describes Golden Crownbeard on their website as “a showy, fast-growing annual with a profuse display of bright golden daisies in fall. Marvelous along fence rows, in meadows or at the back of a casual garden. Sow anytime. Zones 5-8.” I read elsewhere that the Cowpen Daisy is “excellent for reclamation and pollinator conservation mixtures. Provides nectar to bees and butterflies.”
According to the Native American Ethnobotany Database, the Hopis used an infusion of the plant as a treatment against the fever and itch of spider bites, while the Navajo used the dried leaves as a treatment for stomach ailments. Further, they brought good luck, for the seeds were nourishing, and the petals, if chewed, boded a successful hunt — and protected one from lightning.
I don’t know if these flowers will do any of that, but I do know that THIS YEAR, at least, the cowpen daisy is capable of inducing endless smiles and cheerfulness. For the flower is positively E X P L O D I N G across New Mexico, including in the usually dusty dirt pit of field at the center of my neighborhood park.
Come late summer in New Mexico, we all welcome — with a mixture of joy and wistfulness — the first sunflowers that pop up along the roadsides, a sure sign that autumn is on its way. And so when I first glimpsed this gold color on the landscape, I assumed it must be the roadside sunflowers.
But I’d never seen whole fields of sunflowers in New Mexico before. Upon closer inspection I realized these are not the roadside sunflowers I’ve known for decades. Though related — both are Asteraceae — of the aster or daisy family — these fields of gold are a different flower altogether. And I am utterly intoxicated by their magical properties of imbuing joy.
As I write this, the gold of the cowpen daisies across the landscape is becoming burnished as their petals dry and fade, disintegrating into the earth….
… just as a different trove of gold coins begins to scatter in the mountains high above the fields ….
and another, along the valley waterways….
swelling again the treasury of my imagination with golden autumn riches…
Ahhhhhh…… September in New Mexico….
All photos — except the top image of gold coins — by Dawn Chandler.
Read more about autumn in New Mexico here.
Thanks so much for reading my blog. If you enjoy my musings here, please feel free to share this post!
Fnd more of my stories, insights and art on Instagram, Facebook and via my Inside the Studio Notes.
Very Artfully Yours ~
Dawn