Dixon Steel with White City Substation

Oh, I love painting out of doors.  It takes a lot of energy to get everything together to handle the heat and sun and paint but it is so worth it.  

This painting is from a couple of weeks ago I went out to White City with another artist to paint.  I'd scoped out the spot when on a visit to Builder's Bargain Center, (where my husband and I looked at doors and trim). White City is an unincorporated town, was started, as far as I know, with Camp White, a military base that has evolved into the VA Domiciliary, which, as far as I can tell, is a huge place for veteran alcoholics to go for recovery.  They also hold Cub Scout camps at the VA Dom, which my painter friend's son was participating in that day.  Also in White City are many saw mills, in fact my father worked in one when I was growing up nearby, outside of the neighboring town of Eagle Point.  White City is a gloriously depressing place, with great vistas including gloriously ugly industrial buildings and gloriously pretty mountains in the distance, which without the buildings and wires to balance would make terribly boring paintings. All in all it's an amazing place to paint and I hope to go paint there some more, however given the effort involved it may take some time.  Also, we were painting in a huge empty field, which we assumed would be fine to paint in, and it was, but this clean and pudgy republican golfer type guy drove up and said cryptically, "I didn't see you here."  Which of course meant, "I somehow have something to do with the ownership of this land, and because you're not trouble makers I'm not calling the police for your trespassing, and I like being powerful, so instead of just driving by and maybe waving, I had to stop and let you know."  But it was nice of him, we were glad to have the use of his land.  My point is:  it's tricky there to find places to paint, and I hope to do it again soon.