The location where I paint or draw seems to have some difficult to describe effect on the end product. This painting, for example, was done at a friend's apartment, on a balcony designed for people of limited stature. The actual influence that this locale had is not immediately apparent in the painting, but somehow I don't think I could have painted this if I had just been in my usual painting room. Doing it somewhere else probably led me to push myself slightly so as to produce something distinctive. This is probably because the painting remained there during its production, and so received scrutiny before it was fully complete. Knowing people are looking usually make some part of me want to impress or entertain them. The desert landscape sort of reminds me of some of Dali's work. I have always admired the hyperrealistic elements in his work, they seem to effortlessly blend in with the weirder portions. Lacking traditional instruction and techniques and the displine required to carry them out, I can't really begin to approach that kind of clarity. So, I must make do with a blurry combination of what my mind thinks a desert looks like, mediated by what I can actually paint a desert to look like. But, maybe given time and continued effort I can reach some satisfactory rendition of this and other realistic environments to house the illustrated denizens of my mind.