Happy Sunday 🍵☕
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I pulled over somewhere between White Sands and Santa Fe because I couldn't keep driving.
Not because I was lost. Not because the car broke down. Because the sky was doing something I had never seen before and I needed to stand in it.
I grew up in the suburbs of New York. I know what stars look like. But that night I stood corrected.. I did not know what stars looked like until that night, pulled over on a state highway in the middle of New Mexico, freezing cold, exhausted, nowhere near where I needed to be. I stood outside my car and looked up for a long time. I didn't care about any of that.
That was my arrival into Santa Fe. Not the city itself, but the sky above everything that led to it.
Santa Fe took me a few days to understand.
The light there is different. I don't mean that as a cliché.. I mean it literally does something different. It has a glow. Every direction you look, mountain ranges frame the horizon, and at golden hour they turn purple. I'd heard the phrase "purple mountains majesty" my whole life and never once understood where it came from. I understood it the moment I saw those mountains at dusk.
The grass is yellow. That sounds like nothing, but coming from the Northeast it stopped me cold. All this golden, dry grass running along the highway, nothing like anything I'd grown up looking at. I pulled over to photograph it. I sketched it on the side of the road. I was sketching constantly in Santa Fe, loose and fast and not precious about any of it. The place was pouring in faster than I could capture it. Most of those studies were just me trying to keep up.
I was staying with a sculptor, an older guy, I think his name was Michael.. great host, deeply rooted in the city. Adobe walls, Santa Fe architecture, the whole thing. He knew the place well and gave me good recommendations. On my last night, I stood outside his house in the dark with a headlamp on and drew something for him. Just to say thank you. It was that kind of trip.
Then came the square.
A group of musicians had set up and were playing: banjos, a voice like gravel and smoke, nothing like the street performers back home. I set up across the street and drew. Not a study. Not a sketch. Something that came out fully formed and alive in a way I haven't been able to replicate since. The flavor of the square, the energy of the music, the last light of Santa Fe — it all landed on the page at once.
A woman came up while I was finishing and asked if she could buy it.
I said “No.” That it wasn’t for sale.. “These are my memories. But if you give me your information, maybe I'll sell you a print.”
She did. I kept the original. I still have it.
When I finished, I walked across the street and told the musicians I'd drawn them. Thanked them for the inspiration. They handed me a CD. Turns out they were called the Speakeasy Jazz Cats.
I named the piece after them. It's one of the most cherished things I've ever made.
That's what this newsletter is. One place at a time. Where I have been, what I have seen, and what I was personally moved by.
26 States down. 24 to go.
Want more from this trip.. photos, recommendations, stories that didn't make the cut? Just reply and ask. I've got plenty.
Just an Easel and a Dream is Cody's ongoing plein air pastel project: drawing in all 50 states, one landscape at a time.
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Thank You!