Coming up with titles for paintings is, for me and probably for most painters, just a nuisance, but I will say I take a certain pleasure in this one. Initially it refers to the man in the painting, leaning against his car in front of his house. That’s one way to look at Pikes Peak. Another way is to look at the painting, or a reproduction thereof, and thus the viewer sees it through the eyes of the artist. The way the artist can look at Pikes Peak is by painting it. 

When I began this painting some twenty years ago, I was outdoors with my easel, looking at said mountain along with that house with my own eyes, in person. The resulting work fell flat for reasons I won’t go into. I didn’t feel much hope of redeeming it, but on the other hand, I didn’t throw it away as I’ve thrown away so many paintings. I’m not sure what prompted me this week to resume work on it, but I soon realized I was getting somewhere with it.
For touching up the background I referred to a paused video I had taken from nearly the same vantage point in 2021. That too is one way to look at Pikes Peak.

The title can refer to the means of looking, but also to what one makes of it. Zebulon Pike’s imagination informed him that mountain was a cloud, initially. That’s one way to look at it.  One can look at it as yet another hiking challenge. Or a place to drive or bike. One can link it to purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain. Then there’s the gold rush of 1859, as in “Pikes Peak or bust”, though what gold they were finding then was nowhere close to said mountain.

The title can refer to one’s physical vantage point, and also to how one arrived there.

One can look at it from the window of one’s hospital room over fifty miles away, as I did for ten days just last month. Thus, one way to look at Pikes Peak is to be born with a bicuspid valve leading to a heart murmur and aneurysm, have this discovered during a routine checkup, get a couple of echo cardiograms and miscellaneous other procedures, have a couple talks with a cardiologist, undergo surgery, get taken up ten floors to one’s new temporary home, and then take a gander at the view. It’s not a means of looking at that particular geological feature I would have chosen, but that path is now part of my story, just as is the path that took me to the spot where I began this painting.

The view from that spot might be called the back side of Pikes Peak, if one thinks of the regular side as the one seen from Colorado Springs, and one reason I like it is it’s not nearly as well known as other vantage points. But aside from that, I have boundless affection for the immediate area. I’ve been intrigued by the house since the 1970s when I first saw it. I don’t know what town it is in, because there were once quite a number of tiny fledgling towns cheek by jowl in the area trying to make something of themselves. But it’s near Goldfield and what was Independence and Altman. Those are near Victor and Cripple Creek.

I touched up the house this week in my painting to make it look more lived-in. To this day I don’t know its history in that regard. It’s possible someone has always lived there or now and then or never in the years I’ve known of it. I removed a shed and added the vintage car to make it more in line with the series of paintings I’ve been doing over the past years. Then I put in the man. All the paintings in the series have at least one figure in them.

I suppose that one pine tree is an obstruction to the view of the mountain. It’s nearly smack in the middle, in fact. I could have removed it too. But it does serve to draw the viewer in. I mean, I look at the painting and while I enjoy looking at that house, I really feel like walking briskly to the left side until I’m abreast of that tree. Thus, I see the painting as an invitation.

Well, it still isn’t a perfect painting. (Sometimes a painting can be so perfect it’s boring, but if a painter points that out, the risk is it will sound like sour grapes.) But there are individual passages in which I delight. (Yes, I think of elements of a painting as passages, like passages in music or writing. Maybe other painters do too.) This is how it is generally with painting. Elements will emerge that vaguely suggest and inspire other paintings. It can be the tiniest thing— a color in juxtaposition with another color, a bit of lighting, a well-executed form—all beyond explanation. It keeps the painter going, moving on to the next thing. It’s a quest, you might say. I seek a highly individual vantage point that will still speak to viewers of the paintings. I don’t know if this painting will speak adequately of what I make of what I see, of my boundless affection for the area, which has something to do with eternity within me, which has something to do with walking until I’m abreast of that pine tree. But I’m grateful for my life with its various paths and hoped-for paths, its unfulfillable longing. It is that very longing that paradoxically points to its eventual fulfillment. 

(Note: Incidentally, for my previous musing about my hospital stay, since it wasn’t connected with an artwork, I didn’t have an image to go with it. So I slapped on an illustration I had done for Colorado Biz magazine. I just realized it too is one way to look at Pikes Peak, since it was for an article about Colorado Springs. The figure I borrowed from a famous Caspar David Friedrich painting is looking at said peak.)