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| "Spring Comes to the Cataloochee Valley," 2015, oil on canvas. 24" x 36" |
Recently I have come to appreciate with acute sharpness, the experience of the 15 years I have now spent living in the mountains of the Southern Appalachians. They have been such richly deepening years for myself and my life partner Lynn. We have been so fortunate, and these mountains and their people have been so generous in their offering gifts. I have watched them change us, mellow us, and sharpen our commitments for what really matters. And feeling now that our time here is such a fleeting gift, as it always was in truth, as it always is for any of us any where, I have begun a series of paintings that are both landscape and inscape. Something to hold onto, like old photographers used to do fixing an image out of evanescent light emerging in the dark with chemicals. Art is like that. Life too.
This painting "Spring Comes to Cataloochee Valley," is the first, and it was inspired by my most recent of many visits to the Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was early May, spring just creeping across the valley, and it was morning when you can see how the mountains come and go so, mixing with great moving cloud banks. They've done this each early May for ever, and so each May, early in the morning, you can come see this forever.
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