More than twenty years ago, while riding horses with a friend in Alaska, I gazed down the Matanuska Valley, toward the glacier that feeds the river that flows to the sea. From the Glenn Highway the rolling hills and distant mountains were devoid of the touch of humans. No man made structures, no electric transmission lines, no bridges, dams, or other structures. The land looked as it must have always looked. Limitless, inspiring awe and explaining why people have sought the spiritual wilderness. The experience showed me how much I have lost by living in cities, among the millions of my fellow humans. The experience in residence at Whiterock Conservancy was something like that experience in Alaska. The conservancy is huge--5500 acres give or take--and far from metropolitan turmoil, noise, and lights. The quiet of the days and the starry starry nights suggest how the land once was, before we peopled it with ourselves and our machines. And it gave the faintest glimmer of how connected, how in the world we once were.
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| "Near the River," oil on panel, 11x14 |
My work from the residency continues and is becoming a moderate-sized body of work. Here is a new studio oil of a trail along the Middle Raccoon River. It's a wetland, strewn with drifts of wildflowers--sunflowers, Joe Pye weed, coneflowers and Queen Anne lace among them. The sun in early morning seems to set them afire.
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