Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
- JOHN MUIR

(Back story: if you don’t know, now you do… I left Maine in November to join Nick in the Lone Star State, we were living in Corpus Christi for a month, then we moved into our van and have been traveling Westward ever since.)

Living in such a small space is challenging for a lot of reasons - one of which being the utter lack of “studio” space, another is that I don’t have much in the way of art supplies with me either. But the urge to create, and it is truly a deep compulsion for me, is always there. Sometimes it’s a whisper, sometimes it’s a wave, but the creative charge can’t be extinguished - even by tiny living.

So what better place than Joshua Tree to just let it flow. Water color and pen + ink are my only options currently - both are mediums I don’t use often anymore but they’re easy to transport and easy to pack. So off went Nick to read + meditate on a rock while I took over all surfaces in the van and tried to just empty myself into some plein air sketching.

The following are a selection of pen + ink blind contour drawings, contour drawings and timed sketches with watercolor.