The bridge over the Rio Grande river gorge just outside of Taos is an amazing feat of engineering. The bridge spans the gorge 565 feet above the river and offers breathtaking views of the gorge walls with the river snaking below. I have painted the river from its banks where it flows along beside the road from Taos to Espanola, but have never found a way to convey the feeling at the deep gorge section near the bridge. I started the Gorge Bridge in a more traditional representation:
which I quickly came to dislike..... In painting over that scene, the next view of the piece is moving more toward a compression of the shapes and colors:
and finally, in the finished painting, the colors and shapes that convey for me the structural yet ethereal presence of this bridge over the deep gorge are distilled to only those bits I find essential:
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Gorge Bridge
25 x 32 Oil on Canvas on Birch Panel 2017 |
I took the photos used for reference in this piece last December while visiting on a sunny early afternoon. The bridge cast a shadow on the walls of the gorge and the snow and clouds reflected and concealed parts of the Taos mountain ski area in the background.
