There is plenty of color in Texas, at least so far as place names go. There’s Amarillo, Gruene, Orange, Violet, Carmine, Glen Rose, Brown County, Blanco, Piedras Negras and the Red River. That’s quite a palette, but not really representative of the colors one sees here in the landscape. Vast areas, most of the state in fact, are just a variant of brown – desiccated foliage, sand and rocks. Even there you can find color, muted and dusty. Drive far north enough as I did, nearly to Oklahoma, and you will understand why the Red River is called that.
Somewhere west of Fort Worth the dark colored soil gives way to something else, fine red-orange sand. At spots like Copper Breaks State Park near the Pease River, you see the red substrate breaking through the scrubby, tough greenery that grows in that region. The shallow waterways cutting through that part of north Texas carry the distinctive color of the soil, especially after heavy rains. The Red River is the most well known of these, although most of the rivers there run red. The flat, red and green landscape, once the home of the great buffalo herds, goes on for farther than the eye can see. It’s spare and desolate country and the small towns are far between. There is cattle and agriculture, oil and gas and wind farming. None of these endeavors employ great armies of people. Those who do earn their living that way call these small towns home.
Crowell is one of those small towns. The signs on the road let you know how far away you are. Once you are there, you are through it in the blink of an eye and asking yourself “that was it?”. If Crowell has a traffic light, I didn’t see it. If there was a Sam the Lion there, I did 
not meet him. It does have an impressive county courthouse, ringed by low stone and brick commercial buildings put up in a more prosperous era at least 100 years ago. Looking for something there to paint, I walked around the square before things opened up at 9:00. A man
opening his store kindly asked if he could help me with something. When I explained I was hunting for a spot to paint he seemed curious and asked me where I was from. Telling someone in small-town Texas that you are from Austin is not a conversation starter; more like a conversation ender. That I can tell you.
I found my spot to paint looking south on a road leading into town, or out of town, depending on your state of mind. Two old buildings sat on the corner, dealers of ag and construction equipment. Both structures made use of the Quonset hut form that was 
common for the decade after the Second World War. They were not designed to be permanent, these buildings: galvanized steel with rounded over roof beams and a poverty of windows. Whoever put these buildings up 75 years ago would truly be astonished that they are still here standing in Crowell and still in use, having survived decades of drought, tornados, booms and busts. The larger building of the two caught my eye with its decorative brick front, the brick being the same color as the orange soil. A sign had been painted on the brick over the front door years ago in black and white, so faded now I could
not read any of the letters but “P” and “T”. In between the two buildings there was bright yellow equipment and machinery for sale, that hard-to-miss shade of yellow Catepillar uses. Next door, there were new and used John Deere tractors painted in that eponymous John Deere green. There was some color to be found here in Crowell and I set up my tripod to paint it on the courthouse square.
The morning sun cast interesting shadows over the round roofs and the light moved fast. The green and yellow equipment seemed to sparkle out of place in the drab-colored setting. Enormous pickups and bobtails lumbered past as I worked. Some shiny trucks parked on the
square to get their business done in town. A blue Ford pulled up next to the John Deere dealer, its color so “off the scale” that I 
had to dig through my paint box to find the tube of thalo blue that I rarely use for plein air, and only then for skies. I got the work done on the little 4 x 8 inch canvas in just shy of two hours, fussing too long over whether it added or subtracted from the composition to paint the many utility poles and lines I saw. In the end, I painted them in: it is what it is. With the exception of the old, blocky limestone courthouse, no one ever gave too much thought to the appearance of downtown Crowell. The place was built to get the job done. And I guess it still does.
