California Archives - Art G. Oppelland-Hampel

Impressive Vastness of the Desert

I am very much attracted to deserts. For me driving or walking in these untouched and so surprising landscape is always stunning, sometimes frightening, always touching. My deepest amazement is to be in such an inhospitable and in part intoxicatingly beautiful landscape in which its for any creature an incredible art to survive.

An artist journey

Here I share some impressions from our journey to Death Valley and the surrounding desert AND at the bottom of this page some news of my artist journey!!!!!

The photos cannot reflect the real impression but may be give an idea about what can be experienced in the desert. (All photos made with my iPhone camera) and the paintings hopefully reflect my personal experience of the desert! Enjoy!

Desert Roads – Roads to no where?

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Amazing Colors and Landscape in Death Valley and surrounding

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Weather – Sandstorm in the desert

When we headed towards Death Valley we had to pass near areas of Los Angles which had terrible fires and a lot of smoke. The view of the landscape was partly blurred and we didn’t know if this was smoke, fog or a sandstorm. It was a sandstorm which offered most amazing and beautiful views and transformed the landscape from second to second.

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Abandoned houses in Californian desert

Many tried to make a living in the desert, following the gold or other hopes.

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The “Desert Trip Prints”

Our stay in the desert was deeply impressive and I started to create a series of digital paintings. So I am walking on a new and quite exciting artist paths. As soon as I feel my Desert Trip Series is competed I will publish it and offer prints. I have never before offered prints, so finding the right format and paper and especially an experienced Fine Art Printer was a journey in itself. But now I am happy with the one I finally found – the first prints look beautiful!!! I assume I will be able to release this edition, which will be a limited edition about mid of January.

Death Valley inspired digital printing series — Painting #11 Death Valleys Colors

A abandoned house in the desert — Painting #11 Death Valleys Colors

“The little pink house” Greenland prints

Last year I painted a series inspired by our journey to Greenland. As some of the original acrylic paintings are already gone, I decided to release at the same date as well a limited edition of the “The little pink house” Greenland prints so they are available to an affordable price for those who love them. See the development of the original Greenland paintings here. If you want to be one of the first to get to see the full edition and first special offer, join my newsletter here.
Have a little preview here:

And one of my other adventures:
I re-work my website! Please let me know if you find things difficult or better…
this work is still in progress

Have you ever visited a “Friend” you only met on Facebook?

Are you really my friend?“ I once saw an exhibition in MassMoCa (the largest modern art museum in US – absolutely worth a visit) which had this title. A photographer traveled through the world to meet many of her Facebook friends! It was such an impressive exhibition and idea.
Last week I met my Facebook friend Anne Bedrick Fine Art in Palm Springs whom I “know” since some time, we had several little chats going forth and back. Anne is a super organized person and has built up her art career in the last years with success. She was definitely one of the reasons I am in Palm Springs now. Planing our trip to California I remembered that she had moved here and I startet to collect information about the place and it sounded quite tempting! So we are here!

A very special event: Visiting a Facebook Artist Friend!

It was a great meeting, wonderful to chat with this fellow artist and to see her beautiful paintings in real that were already so familiar to me !!! We both are colorists, we love colors and cannot do without it. Anne shares her studio with her little dog, while my studio company is Miez, the cat. Anne is one of the best organized artists I know. She showed me her organization system to follow up her paintings, great! I wish I was disciplined enough to adopt this system. She even makes a little exact plan for her exhibition walls in the next art fair!

I LOVE TO GET TO KNOW NEW ARTIST FRIENDS!
Did you ever visit a Facebook friend? How is your experience? And do you have a studio company pet?