Texas Blue

Late winter / early spring is always the time for Texas artists to hit the highways, camera in hand, to generate this year’s crop of bluebonnet photos.  It is almost a religion in Texas, akin to our fanaticism about chili.  I am guessing that at this time of year, we corner the market, depleting all available supplies of cobalt and cerulean blue oil paint. 

In this respect I am sacrilegious.  I must be the only artist in Texas who does not produce canvas after canvas of bluebonnets.  But I still love the bluebonnet hunt.  It is an all-day event, sometimes a whole weekend.  You pack food, liquids, and required meds (bug repellent, sun screen, band-aids, etc.).  You know what you’re going after.  You are not stopping at the strip malls to buy designer shoes and discount clothes.  You are not going antiquing.  You are covering sacred Texas ground to accomplish one goal:  Get snaps of bluebonnets.  And lots of ‘um.  Close-ups, completely covered fields, sometimes whole valleys.  The dedicated bluebonnet hunter knows which areas had the best crop last year, how this year’s winter will affect this year’s crop, who barb-wires their property to allow or deny access.  We learn all this on our Quest for the Blue.

And there is another thing we learn, sometimes the hard way.

 We artists are not the only ones who appreciate bluebonnets

Painting nature is not good enough.  We have to remember to respect it.

 And remember who is boss