El Pendejo Lands In Opodepe for The Very First Time

June 22, 2020
   Sometimes having the right photo reference can make or break a painting. Case in point.

   About twenty years ago I was visiting one of my Kingman cowboy cousins in Golden Valley (outside Kingman, Arizona) and I went out to take some photos near Secret Pass. I found an abandoned building and just as I snapped off a photo, a quick dust storm came up and I got a happy-accident-sequence of dust enveloping this abandoned structure. I knew that someday I would utilize this effect in a painting and this morning I finally got the chance.

Daily Whip Out:

"El Pendejo Lands In Opodepe for

The Very First Time"

   Notice how the dust that accompanies El Pendejo's arrival envelopes the entire adobe at center right. Here's where I got that specific effect:

Golden Valley dust storm reference

   Full disclosure: I found this dust storm sequence in my massive—and semi-organized—archives about a month ago and pulled it out for usage. And here is the historic reference for Opodepe, Mexico taken in the 1920s.

Opodepe, Mexico, 1920s

   The final two pieces of the puzzle are my daughter Deena was in the Hands Across The Border program at Cave Creek Elementary School back in the early nineties and her school did an exchange program and we all went to Opodepe, which is south of Magdalena, Mexico, up in the mountains. And, I borrowed this saguaro I shot last week up at Barro's property:

I'm always a sucker for a

downward hanging saguaro arm.

   All of this disparate history came together for this set piece and opening sequence for El Pendejo. Sweet, yes?

"Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow."

—Vincent van Gogh