Michael Baum Art Contemporary Paintings of the Southwest

Michael Baum
Journeys

Awaiting the Storm

There are literal journeys, the road trips that Patrice and I take all over the Southwest. She drives, I ride, eyes glued to the passing landscape. “Stop!”

Patrice swerves the car into a weed-choked pullout. I jump out. There’s an old adobe building with gothic arched windows. It looks like a small church, but there is no bell tower, just a rusty corrugated roof. At the front is a large barn door the height of the building. Maybe it was a church emptied of worshippers, gutted, refitted, and filled with hay. I circle the building working the camera, taking it in.

Thunder ripples. The air is charged with the energy of an approaching storm. The church is silent, washed in the eerie, liquid light that precedes the rain. There are souls here, hiding in the hay.

Michael Baum specializes in contemporary representational paintings of the western and southwestern landscape.