Inspiration

I drove out on an adventure last weekend: a gray, snowy day with mists rising from icy

ground, filling the deep spaces. The cold and wet wind blew in through the car window 

as I pointed my camera towards the softened treetops and distant ridges. I can clearly 

see that this place has rooted itself in my imagination - deeply - to become the inspiration for my work. 

"Ridges", watercolor 2011

It was a strange and variable weather day. I drove through white out snows and high winds, then suddenly bright sunshine illuminated icy branches and sparkling brush. 

The day was a long, woven braid of sun and wind, snow, ice and mists. Subtle blues 

and grays played with the dancing bare branches in fields where the evergreens 

at the edge of the forests, watched. I wonder if I can do justice to the magic 

when next I put paint to paper?  As soon as I ask this I know that THIS is the quest, 

and it will never be done, because always, the next painting holds the promise of 

some other subtlety I might capture, some color, some dance of light and pattern. 

Warm days of sunshine melted almost all of the snow, 

revealing the source of other creative endeavors. 

But early March is hardly spring, and I awoke one morning to soft new snow clinging 

to the beech tree outside my bedroom window. My bed sits next to a large 

picture window, from which I see the view below. Once, an enormous bull moose 

walked under the window, his rack slowly rising from the earth as if a new tree was 

sprouting there. In the early morning light, he was dream-like, melting into the forest

with a grace that seemed incongruent with his bulky form. 

By early afternoon a warming sun turned snow to water and an endless 

shower of drops and plops was the rhythm of the day. 

Strange how fast the day shifted from cold and frozen to warm and soft and wet. 

More snow came but just as soon the sun, and my late afternoon walk yesterday

 was full of a hide-and-seek light, surprising me at every turn.