A few days before the new year began I was able to go out and paint. The day was warming nicely when I met with Kent Brewer, Tina Bohlman, Doug Clark and some other local painters. We headed to Five Points, a small community in Ellis County, Texas. If you remember the movie Places in the Heart, with Sally Fields and Danny Glover, a few of the scenes in that movie were shot near this place in Ellis County.

Five Points has a really cool cotton gin, rusty tin, busted windows; history sitting quietly as the world goes by. I looked the gin over, but I decided to paint a bit down the road from the gin where I noticed some round hay bales in a field. It was a bleak, partly cloudy winter day, but the hay bales seemed to speak of something better, of warmer days.

9 x 12 plein air oil on panel titled Winter Harvest.

A fellow painter, Doug Clark, and I set up our easels in the direction of the round hay bales and old farm house and buildings standing in the distance. Even though there was a certain deficient in the color of a winter landscape, there still seems to be subtile and sometimes elusive hues waiting for the coming spring. Red, purples and blues mixing with the yellow ochre and sienna of the hay fields.

When I saw these round hay bales, as if guarding the little farm house in the background, all I could think about was God’s common grace. The grace that He pours out on all. His Kindness. The Bible mentions a particular kind of grace that all share in, as in Matthew 5:45b “for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” The hay in the field screams of the kindness of God. Psalm 65:9 thru 11 mentions the bounty God provides:

“You visit the earth and cause it to overflow; You greatly enrich it; The stream of God is full of water; You prepare their grain, for thus You prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly, You settle its ridges, You soften it with showers, You bless its growth. You have crowned the year with Your bounty, And Your paths drip with fatness.

Painting on location in Ellis County, Texas near the community of Five Points. 9 x 12 Oil on panel called Winter Harvest

Common grace and amazing grace. I titled this piece winter harvest, but also wanted to call it “Common Grace”, or even “Amazing Grace. The other grace revealed in the scriptures really is amazing. It is that grace God gives to us to come to Him. Ephesians 2:4, 5, 8 puts it like this:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

I know this is not the best painting “ever”, but I hope you enjoy it and notice God’s kindness toward us this New Year.

Painting in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Far west Texas is fascinating to me. Maybe because it’s totally opposite from the climate where I grew up – north Georgia and east Tennessee. There, in the “Old South”, it is always wet and green. I remember those cool, damp summer evenings when the dew would cover the grass like frost.

West Texas, the Chihauhaun Desert in particular, is bankrupt of moisture…it is dry and dusty, with another layer of dry dusty air on top of that. To say water is scarce is an understatement. However the land has it’s awesome, unique beauty. A one of a kind place full of mystery and intrigue.

My wife, her sister, her mother and I made a trip out to the Guadalupe Mountains for a few days in October, 2012. The Guadalupe Mountains National Park is right near the Texas-New Mexico border. We ran up and down the road between Carlsbad, New Mexico and the park. During these 3 or 4 days, we saw virtually no one. After living here in the rat race of DFW, I thought to my self ” I could get used to this quietness, the solitude and wide open spaces. It was a great place to paint, and I took my easel with me and was able to set up a few times and paint.

12 x 9 Plein air oil on panel painted of a view of El Capitan of the Guadalupe Mountains

One day we went on a short walk down a trail that was to lead us to a spring, Smith Spring. An oasis in the desert. I voiced my opinion that I had my doubts. It was about a mile to the spring, but I could see nothing in the open country that I thought could be the location of a spring. We were in the desert. Agave plants, cactus, rocks, short, stubby juniper trees and not much else.

Looking up at the Guadalupe Mountains in the Chihuahuan Desert – a beautiful spring is a couple thousand feet beyond the dead tree.

But as we neared the 3/4 of a mile mark, the trail came alongside a small ravine and then followed along the edge of the ravine. The ravine begin to deepen, widen a little and then, almost like passing through a curtain into another land, we were surrounded by huge Ponderosa Pines, and Sawtooth Maples. Yes, Maples in the desert, right on the banks of a beautiful spring. There are some words I don’t use much, and enchanting is one of them. But, this place was kind of enchanting. Clear cold water coming out of the barren mountain side. Life giving water in a dry and parched land.

I am always amazed at God’s creation; how He provides, even in what seems like hard or impossible places. It’s a reminder of His “common grace”, that grace He gives to all living creatures. It says in Psalms 107:35 “He changes a wilderness into a pool of water, And a dry land into springs of water”. Smith Springs in the Guadalupe mountains was an excellent illustration of that provision.

Smith Springs is the ONLY water supply for miles around. The Mescalero Apache’s of that region used this spring, as did the Buffalo Soldiers the Government sent to the area to contain the Apaches. A variety of wildlife drink from these waters. When you read a bit of the history of the place you find out that several battles have been fought to control that ground, that supply of water in the desert.

If you were wondering in this desert dying of thirst and you didn’t know this spring was there, you would probably walk within a thousand feet of it and miss it. But it’s there, giving life to all who go to it and drink.

When I think about a spring in the desert, it reminds me that this is really the entire message of the Bible…living water (Christ) is available for any who will simply drink.

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Johh 7:38

Once we were at the springs the air was cool and everything was covered by a canopy of tree. Ferns, large Sawtooth Maples and dragon flies right there in the Chihauhaun Desert. It was really amazing.

Ferns, dragon flies and sawtooth maples on the bank of Smith Springs in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park

When we begin to head back in the direction we came, in just a few feet we had passed  from the sanctuary of the ponderosa pines and maples into the dry heat of the Chihauhaun Desert.

El Capitan rises in the distance. A few miles to the right of El Capitan is Guadalupe Peak, the highest mountain in Texas. It rises 8,751 feet above sea level.