Downpour

I painted this while at the end of a very wearing COVID lockdown in El Chaltén, Argentine Patagonia. The day started with a halfhearted rain and moved to a downpour. It’s impossible to paint outdoors in these conditions, so my group painted from the windows, or read, or played Scrabble.

I spent a lot of time looking out the window, like a child deprived of her recess. The meteoric weather shifts remind me of Frederic Edwin Church’s The Heart of the Andes, that magnificent, show-stopping canvas that now resides at the Met. Even though it was painted in the northern parts of the continent, it captures something of the character of Patagonia as well.

As rough as this is, it does capture the essentials of the day—rain, the scraggly mein of southern beeches, a wild mountain peak and, above all, a rainbow.