Around Far West Texas, change comes slowly, and most of us locals appreciate that timetable. In tiny Fort Davis, Texas, history lingers like a guest sipping iced tea on a shady veranda. It's not that we don't appreciate things of the modern world. But we buy our balsamic vinegar, vine-ripened tomatoes and Blue Bell ice cream mere paces from one of the best-preserved and reconstructed frontier forts in the American West. Leaving the fort grounds, you can walk a stretch of the Overland/Butterfield Mail Route, the longest unpaved segment of that historic trail that remains. (Before that, this time-worn dirt road was known as the Old Spanish Trail.  Think, conquistadors, caravans of wooden-wheeled wagons carrying goods from Chihuahua to Taos...)

Walking such ground as you go about life affects the way you look at time and space.
 
Numerous books and local organizations, such as the Friends of the Fort and the Historical Society regularly share arcane facts about our predecessors in Jeff Davis County. My favorite involves notorious mail carrier Henry Skillman. The first Butterfield/Overland Express carrier was taking his siesta in one of the towering palisades of igneous rock lining his route. He took off his boots and was mending his buckskin pants when some pesky Apaches interrupted his break. The dedicated mail carrier reported he dropped his drawers to sling his mail pouch over his shoulder. Bare of more than just his boots, he then tediously evaded the Apaches, who rudely confiscated his horse before scattering back into the mountains. After hours of playing hide and seek in the rocks, Skillman continued on to El Paso on foot. While neither rain nor snow nor Apaches could keep our Henry from his appointed rounds up the Old Spanish Trail from Fort Davis, I can only imagine the sunburn he must have suffered.

Sleeping Lion Mountain typifies those rugged, jumbled igneous rock formations that make this area so wildly spectacular. The mountain is the spinal cord of Fort Davis.  Along one side spread the original pre-Civil War fort, followed by the "new" army post, the one still standing today. Town sprouts under the mountain's southern and western shadows. The Davis Mountains State Park and McDonald Observatory have the mountain's back. More significantly, just past Sleeping Lion, there's still nothing but land and sky. And lots of both.
 
When I had to choose my subject for a recent in-studio pastel painting demonstration for a group of out-of-area artists, Sleeping Lion seemed a good introduction to Fort Davis landscape art.  In an hour and a half, a relatively short time, as painting goes, I would paint a sky, because that's what I do—I paint skies.
 
But I wanted to convey a sense of place to these Texas hill country artists.  I wanted to share this place in history, this place unchanged by big box stores and high rises and freeways. Although there wasn't time to spin the yarn about Henry Skillman, I wanted my fourteen visiting artists to intuit what a barefoot hike from Fort Davis might be like. I couldn't take them hiking, so I painted from photos I took while hiking the trail from the park to the fort with young city cousin/mountain goat Dylan Hernandez.

I enjoyed my visitors, the Lakeway Artists and their workshop instructor, professional artist Danny Jones of Mansfield, Texas. We painted, wined and dined. We laughed a lot. I hope they learned a lot.
I also hope they took something wild and agelessly empty home with them.
As I hope you do.

I introduce Sleeping Lion Mountain. Look down on it. Imagine climbing in and out of those long-cooled lava rocks, hiding from pursuers, taking shelter from the sun and storms.
Imagine you're alone. Walking across a mountain ridge. Standing on this mountain trail between the State Park and the old fort. The surrounding mountains hide all evidence of man's still sparse habitation in the area. Careful you don't bump into that needle-sharp dagger that clings to the rocky ground for dear life.
Look straight ahead. Will that distant rain shower make it all the way to Sleeping Lion Mountain?
I invite you to travel into a cloudy West Texas sky.  It's a long way to Infinity, but here in Far West Texas, we can still see that it's out there.


UNDER A SKY SO BROAD AND DEEP
Sleeping Lion Mountain, Fort Davis, TX
12" x 18" pastel on archival Kitty Wallis paper   copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
$1800 unframed
* for a larger image and more paintings of Big Bend country, visit my website http://oldspanishtrailstudio.com

TECHNIQUE TIP
Single Point Sky Perspective :

Years of flying made me acutely aware that clouds aren't puffy little cottonballs in cerulean sky. Clouds are substantial, sometimes scary entities that compete with each other, crowd each other, layer themselves over each other like rowdy litter of pups clamoring to get out of a box. Clouds are NOT symmetrical white shapes on a solid blue field, and they aren't all floating around on the same plane.

To paint layers of clouds, I employ perspective, just as when painting terrain, except mirror-imaged. The clouds at the top of the page are the closest. As such, they will appear larger, and they will overlap those beneath them. Successive layers of clouds get progressively smaller as they approach the horizon, and will be layered from the top of the page downward, with those on the horizon being the farthest back layer. In painting the ground, the exact opposite is true—items at the bottom of the page are closest and therefore, largest. This front layer overlaps successively smaller layers approaching the horizon.

Try this: Fold a piece of paper in two parts, but not necessarily in half. Your fold is the horizon. The top and bottom edges (farthest from the fold) will hold the largest shapes, say, clouds and rocks. Progressively layer increasingly smaller clouds (down) and behind and rocks (up) and behind until you reach the fold.  That's where you place your smallest, farthest clouds and tiniest, most distant rocks.

See, you didn't even have to attend my workshop demo to learn that. Of course, you did miss drinks followed by that delicious, authentic Mexican food dinner on the veranda, but unfortunately, that can't be helped now. (The Internet does have its limitations.)