New guidebook to the Catalina Mountains features watercolor paintings

The splendor of the Santa Catalina Mountains — rising dramatically from cactus canyons to fir-forested Mount Lemmon northeast of Tucson — is captured in a new book brimming with evocative words and watercolor paintings.

“Catalina Mountains: A Guide Book with Original Paintings” is the work of Tucsonan Frank Rose, an avid hiker and artist whose watercolors have often been displayed in galleries.

“When I want peace, contentment and healing, I go to the mountains,” Rose wrote in the book’s preface. “Fortunately, the base of the nearest range (the Catalinas) is just under seven miles from our home.

“I have taken this trip more than a thousand times since my wife and I moved here in 1982,” noted Rose, a retired clergyman who is 91 years old. “In that time I have done hundreds of paintings. The landscape pictures form the main part of this book, many of them now in private collections.”

The 90-page book, published by Hardy Perennial Press in Tucson with a price of $19.95, includes four colorfully illustrated chapters. They include: “Viewing the Mountains from Below,” “Approaching the Mountains from the Valley,” “A Guided Tour up Catalina Highway” and “What to See on the Way Down.”

The chapter on “Viewing the Mountains from Below” includes text and watercolors on towering Cathedral Rock and the range after a winter snowfall.

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“Approaching the Mountains from the Valley” ranges from a scene of spring wildflowers to a depiction of saguaros at Catalina State Park.

“A Guided Tour up Catalina Highway” and “What to See on the Way Down” include descriptions and watercolors of sights along the way.

Each entry in the book also features a watercolor of wildflowers in the mountains.

“Most of the paintings were done in the last 12 years and some go back more than 30 years,” Rose said. “Thirty-three of the paintings in the book will be in a show” at the Contreras Gallery in Tucson during March of this year.

Rose said the book is available at the visitor center in Sabino Canyon northeast of Tucson, and some book stores in Tucson might have it in stock later.

The author of several other books including “Mountain Wildflowers” and “Mountain Trees,” Rose said his “Catalina Mountains” book will be available for purchase at his booth (Number 225) at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 2-3 at the University of Arizona.