Arizona House

Painting dedicated to his dear cousin Gabrielle and hand delivered across USA to the Swiss Alps Valley!

A strange painting, not like the others.

This oil painting made in Scottsdale of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, gave me many difficulties.

Wanting to make a special painting for a very dear friend, it was the start of a not easy adventure; here are some points…
- Work on this painting without revealing “the can of worms”, hence my idea of ​​hiding the bottom ½ part.
- Use the bottom part to practice on Saguaro cactus, Ocotillos and other desert plants.
- Use the bottom part in a gag, but with the meaning of discovering a secret hence the idea of ​​a hole in my canvas, which becomes 3 canvases one on top of the other.
- A temporary secret to avoid curiosity too early, the treasure and its protection the rattlesnake, “Diamondback Rattlesnake” from Arizona.
- Not easy to spot, where to place the cacti for the desired effect; to the point of using the technique of punching a hole in a printed sheet above the canvas (my reference sheet placed behind). A lot of scalpel scraping of my very dry mistakes.
- Of course the cacti in groups give an idea of ​​the desert of the State, but seen from afar, another subject appears, which always keeps the final goal: the representation of the state of the Grand Canyon where Alain has lived since 1986.
- Like all of Alain’s paintings, it has its GPS code on the back (32.635289,-111.400776), a simple Google search for this code gives its exact location in the world.
For Alain, this represents his original search for a house in the desert, digging into his ideas of where to live his retirement, his choice being the desert so particular to this state that he now calls his adopted country!