Jason Kowalski, Rambling Prospector, 2024, oil & mixed media on panel,  48 x 60 in.

Clad in a plaid button-down on a nippy autumn day in a forested neighborhood west of downtown Monument, Kowalski stands in his sizable attached garage turned studio, gazing at two large paintings hanging on the wall. The two pieces are the last of 16 headed to a new cloud-themed show at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, N.M. One depicts an old, forsaken gas station in Raton, N.M., with a denim-washed sky and a poof of cotton ball clouds. In the second are two old cars parked in front of a motel on Route 66 in Holbrook, Ariz., where a vacancy sign hangs in front of a birthday cake-shaped stack of clouds.