The Art of R. Geoffrey Blackburn

"Twilight On The Colorado"

"This red rock painting is a twilight moment along the Colorado River west of Moab, Utah. ( What is not visible here is a potash evaporation pond that I painted out of the scene - exercising my artistic license here). This was from the last trip I made with my late friend and legendary geologist Robert R. "Bob" Norman and Tom Davis. It was a really amazing adventure particularly in light of the fact that Bob was in the last stages of macular degeneration and was in fact so blind in both eyes that he had to be literally led to the truck. And yet, he unerringly led us many miles out into the wild to show us a petrified wood outcropping along the edge of a mighty significant canyon wall. The amazing part was when he told me to turn the truck off the road where neither Tom or I could see ANY evidence of even a game trail let alone a road, and he led us a winding, bone-jarring mile or so over some really scary terrain right to the outcrop! Tom and I kept looking at each other and wondering if Bob was going to run us off a cliff-him being blind and all. Bob finally told me to stop the truck and get out and walk ahead about 75 feet and we would find the outcrop. And damned if he wasn't right on the money!!   Bob was one of the most amazing people I have ever known and a dear friend and surrogate father for some 40 years. 

Back to my red rock painting: I added two Great Blue Herons and took a few artistic liberties with the red rock cliffs, but the scene as we came upon it was pretty much as I painted it.   If you haven't been to this upper part of the Grand Canyon geological area, you have really missed something.  To me, the colors are even more spectacular than the Arizona part of the Colorado Plateau.

R. Geoffrey Blackburn