F. Scott Hess

The deserts out here in California are both beautiful and dangerous. The landscape can be stunning, with colors and rock formations like nothing you’ve ever seen, but to get to them you go to some very isolated places. Eccentric characters roam these spaces, and many of them are armed to the teeth. I’ve seen the hulk of abandoned vehicles shot so full of holes it looked like a sieve, and even had holes six inches in diameter from some shoulder fired missiles.

Painters Bluff captures some of what I feel is essential about the desert experience. Something has happened down in the canyon, but we don’t know what. Tourists and desert characters form an uneasy mix, while one fellow makes his way up the slope clutching his gut. It all looks serious, but perhaps it is merely a painter’s bluff…