RED ROCK CANYON NEAR LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada, 10 x 16 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Red Rock Canyon is a National Conservation Area about 15 miles west of Las Vegas, Nevada.  It features a visitors' center and a 13-mile one-way loop road with many scenic overlooks with parking for access to hiking trails and rock climbing sites.  Pat drove me around the circuit once while I scouted good locations for drawing, then a second time when we parked at the locations I had selected.  The plants in the foreground at the overlook where I drew the red rocks and distant mountains were not very interesting, so I "transplanted" some cactus from another site nearby.  Artistic license.

UPDATE:
Red Rock Canyon, Nevada is currently on exhibit in the exhibition PLEIN AIR PAINTERS OF CHICAGO at the Palette & Chisel Academy Gallery, 1012 N. Dearborn Street in Chicago through February 3, 2018.

GEORGE SQUARE, GLASGOW

George Square, Glasgow, 15 x 10 inch ink, watercolor and colored pencil by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I drew this one afternoon last July in George Square in the heart of Glasgow's Merchant City.  That imposing building houses the City Chambers.  The column at the right is topped by a statue of Sir Walter Scott, the novelist.  Sir Walter is topped by a seagull, as are most of the statues in Glasgow.  An exception is the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, which is topped by an orange traffic cone.  I kid you not.

ROOFTOPS OF BELHAVEN TERRACE, GLASGOW

Belhaven Rooftops, Glasgow, 16 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

One of the reasons for my 3-week visit to Scotland this summer was to attend the wedding festivities for my sister's stepdaughter.  She and her new husband live and work in London, but planned this destination wedding in his hometown of Glasgow, Scotland.  We stayed at the Belhaven Hotel, which occupies a lovely Edwardian building in the West End of Glasgow near the wedding venue.  Picture Belhaven Terrace as an oval street of outward-facing buildings squashed flat to run parallel to the Great Western Road.  The Belhaven Hotel is on the north-facing side of the terrace and looks over the Terrace, a narrow parkway, and then the Great Western Road.  The back of the hotel, where my room was located, looks over a low outbuilding toward the backs of the houses on the south-facing side of Belhaven Terrace.  One afternoon I opened the window and spent some time drawing this view. 

This painting is in my current exhibition at 3 Crowns Park Gallery.  See previous post for details. 

NEW TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK EXHIBITION IN EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

Everyone is invited to my new TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK exhibition. There will be some overlap with the Traveler's Sketchbook show I did two years ago at Beverly Art Center, but this one will feature two big Venetian studio paintings and new images from Scotland, England, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia, Illinois and Indiana that weren't in that earlier exhibition.  

ON THE WATERFRONT IN OBAN, SCOTLAND

Oban, Scotland Waterfront, 14 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Oban is a port city on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands facing the Isle of Mull.  It has a square harbor lined with old buildings including this elegant hotel constructed (according to a terra-cotta relief on its facade) in 1902.  The tide was out when I made this drawing and the blue-hulled salvage boat was resting on the harbor floor with its stern almost out of the water.  On a pier to the left of the hotel are two modern restaurants, one Scottish and one Italian, both featuring super-fresh seafood.  I ate at both of them more than once.  On the other side of the harbor, behind the ferry terminal, is a take-away shop where you can get hot local seafood for a fraction of restaurant prices if you don't mind eating standing up outdoors.  A platter of mussels boiled in wine broth was a little over $5 US (3.95 British pounds).

This is one of the new paintings that will be featured in my exhibition TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK: Paintings and Graphics by George C. Clark at the Three Crowns Park Gallery in Evanston in November.  I will post the formal announcement with full details here soon.

SAVE THE DATE: There will be an artist's reception on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 2, from 4-6pm.

George C. Clark drawing the Oban waterfront

NEWFOUND GAP IN THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

Newfound Gap in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 11 x 14.5 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I drew this on-site in Tennessee last year.  It is one of the never-before exhibited pieces that will be in my upcoming Traveler's Sketchbook exhibition in November in Evanston.  There will be some overlap with the Traveler's Sketchbook show I did at Beverly Art Center in 2015 but there will also be a couple of large studio paintings of Venice and new watercolors and graphics from Scotland, Virginia, Tennessee, Nevada, Indiana and Illinois that weren't in that earlier exhibition.

I will post an announcement for the show with full details here soon.

Save the date:  the artist's reception will be Thursday, November 2, from 4 to 6pm. 

MULL CAR FERRY DOCKED IN OBAN, SCOTLAND

Isle of Mull Car Ferry Docked in Oban, Scotland, 12 x 10 inch ink drawing on cream paper by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Here is another page from my Scotland sketchbook.  This shows one of the big Cal-Mac car ferries that connect the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides with the Scottish mainland.  Oban is a good-sized town for the thinly-populated Highlands.  It has a busy port and bills itself both as "the gateway to the Hebrides" and "the seafood capital of Scotland" and it is correct on both counts.  The tide was out when I did this drawing and a lone heron was patrolling the exposed seafloor for edible creatures stranded in the tidal pools.

FISHING TRAWLER IN TOBERMORY, SCOTLAND

Trawler Ellen Ann, Tobermory, Scotland,  13 x 10 inch ink drawing on cream paper by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I am recently back from three weeks in Scotland.  We spent 5 nights in Tobermory, the main town on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  It is a lovely place with a sheltered harbor lined with brightly painted mostly 200 year old buildings.  There is an active fishing fleet and Scotland leads the world in sustainable fish farming so the seafood here is amazingly fresh and delicious and reasonably priced.  This is a page from my sketchbook.  I drew this trawler unloading its catch while waiting for my wife and sisters to join me for supper at the Fish Cafe, an excellent restaurant located on this quay about a hundred feet from where I was drawing.  I had plaice sautéed in lemon butter with roasted little fingerling potatoes and vegetables and a dram of the local Ledaig single malt whisky.  

George C. Clark in Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland

CHRISTMAS IN BROWN COUNTY. INDIANA

Christmas in Nashville, Indiana, 8 x 18 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

We celebrated Christmas with a mini-reunion with my siblings in Brown County, Indiana.  One sister didn't come, but those who did had a splendid holiday.  We stayed at the Abe Martin Lodge in Brown County State Park, which I highly recommend, and not just because it is named after the great newspaper cartoon character created by Indianapolis writer/artist Kin Hubbard.  Christmas morning we went into the nearby town of Nashville.  It was overcast but unseasonably warm-- almost 50 degrees.  I made this on-site drawing across a 2-page spread in my sketchbook.  After working on it about half an hour I had to put my gloves on to finish it, making this the second piece of artwork I created wearing gloves.  The first was a watercolor of the Grand Canyon I painted from the South Rim one December.

The big gingerbread Victorian at the right once housed the John Dillinger Museum, a remarkable collection of artifacts, memorabilia, and ephemera telling the story of the notorious 1930s bank robber.  I wonder what happened to the collection after the museum closed.  At the left is the biggest sycamore tree I have ever seen.  I bet it was already growing there when George Rogers Clark (no relation) drove the British out of Indiana and Illinois and in fact all the territory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes during the American Revolution.

PAINTING SOLD AT DANON GALLERY + SEE MY INTERVIEW ON PBS WTTW CHANNEL 11

High Ground by George C. Clark in the window of the Danon Gallery in Evanston last week

Bob Danon called this morning to say that a collector who was interested in my big landscape High Ground decided to buy it after seeing the interview I did on WTTW TV's "Chicago Tonight" program about my current exhibition PORTRAITS REAL & IMAGINARY BY GEORGE C. CLARK at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Here is a link to that interview.  

Thank you, Bob, and thanks also to WTTW-TV and producer Marc Vitali.