The Great Sand Dunes

Description

Acrylic on canvas panel, 18 x 24 inches. On a recent trip to Colorado, we stopped at The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve near the city of Alamosa in SW Colorado. The park preserves very large sand dunes, some as high as 750 feet. I painted this scene of the dunes showing in the background, the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. The dunes here are the highest in North America, and cover an area of 30 sq miles and contain about 5 billion cubic meters of sand!

I decided to keep the painting very simple to highlight the color of the sand dunes compared to the mountains in the background, and grass in the foreground. The painting is based on several photos I took from the main road that approaches the entrance to the park headquarters. It was a beautiful day, with just a few clouds in the sky.

I used Roadside Geology of Colorado as my reference to find geologic details of various places we visited. The sand dunes are composed of quartz and volcanic rocks. The sand is blown by strong winds from the SW moving toward three low passes in the Sangre de Cristo Range. According to what I’ve found, opposing SE winds blowing across the mountains meet SW winds causing a swirling affect resulting in higher dunes than normal. The Medano Creek, which doesn’t flow all year, does interact with the dunes. Ripple marks, animal and plant tracks are abundant.