new art highlight Palo Duro Canyon oil painting

Palo Duro painting on my easel after some in studio improvements

The Palo Duro painting was painted in the State Park named after the painting. This canyon is about 30 minutes south of Amarillo Texas. Since I’ve never been to this State Park I wasn’t sure if there was any good views to plein air paint. Palo Duro is like a mini Grand Canyon where you start from the rim and either drive or walk down.

The day was blazing hot going down into the bottom of the canyon. There’s a visitors center before driving to the bottom, it’s quite small and worth stopping. Inside the visitors center to my surprise I found many pasts artist have painted plein air at this very park. This inspired me to continue to find a suitable spot to paint, because I also needed more practice.

Back in Oklahoma City I struggled and wasted a couple of hours on a first draft, I hoped this second time a could prevail. I was determined to paint something better than my previous attempt.

I drove down to the bottom of the canyon until I was stopped by a road block. This was around mid June 2025, flooding was frequent in Texas this year. A flood had wiped out part of the road and I had to pull over. I was in luck because that was the perfect spot. I pulled over into empty camping lots, the canyon was imposing from this position. I had a few limitations, the day was getting late, and something else I didn’t anticipate, flies. If I had arrived a few hours earlier I could’ve finished, but time wasn't in my favor. I set up and was met with non-stop attacks from flies.

In the end the painting turned out as a solid base, and I was able to finish later on. I started to learn not to use so much extra mediums, in my experience it makes the painting too wet whenever I need to paint in the open air.