I entered a kind of time warp in painting this one… after blocking it in the day before I started in on it again the next morning, and the next thing I knew it was after 3. I remember a point working on the big cloud where my energy shifted - I had been doing a lot of scrubby brushstrokes that were fast and frenetic, and then all of a sudden I started making these slow loopy strokes and felt this calm wash over me, like the cloud started to tell me how to paint it, and I started to channel its slowly shifting towering presence. This is the view looking south from Mt. Mansfield’s forehead from a hike last week with my sister. As we were hiking up the trail I was telling her how I’d just bought some 3 ft by 4 ft canvases and wanted to paint a grand vista of some sort that would be the entryway painting for my upcoming exhibit. As we popped out of the trees and up on top, I had found just what I wanted.

When hiking Nebraska Notch from the Stevensville side, we sometimes opt to bushwhack a bit along the edge of the what is sometimes a pond and sometimes a meadow depending on the level of beaver activity. On this particular late summer day, there were a few grumbles from the peanut gallery about our bare legs getting scratched by the sedges, but for me the expansive view of the pond and notch with reflected clouds was worth it, and the lingering stings a physical reminder of being in that peaceful place with people I love.

On this late fall day I summited Hunger in the morning enroute across the Skyline of the Worcester Range. The low angle of the sun cast dark shadows on the rocks as I took-in the expanse of the Green Mountains in the distance.

This painting is the view of Sugarbush and beyond from atop Nancy Hanks Peak in Lincoln/Warren, VT. 

Looking South from Mt. Mansfield’s forehead on a beautiful summer day.

Walking a ridgeline in the clouds feels like a spirit walk. An opening to otherness - connecting to the beyond. It took me a long time to understand that science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive - they just answer different questions.

“Pinnacle View” features the view of Camel’s Hump and the Waterbury Reservoir from atop Stowe Pinnacle in the Worcester Range. This mid-November scene, what some refer to as “stick season”, challenges the notion that this time of year is dull and brown. This is my favorite season to hike – the tourist traffic has died down and the trees hum a little as they prepare for the short winter days.

This distinct rock formation on the summit of Camel’s Hump has an altar-like quality to me.  It seems a place for sacred rituals, a lightning rod to the heavens, a place where metaphysical messages are sent and received.

I encountered this little guy amidst the mossy tree roots on a hike on Mt. Mansfield a while back and was struck by the way the sunlight lit it up like a candle. I painted it macro 24X36 to suggest that sometimes the tiniest among us can have outsized presence.

This was the first summit on an epic 12 mile hike along the Skyline Trail along the ridgeline of the Worcester Range.  My husband, sister, eldest son and Gem the dog made this trek on the last day of summer vacation last year.  The especially wet summer made for a plethora of mushrooms all along the hike in every color of the rainbow.  By the time we were scrambling down the quartz vein of Mt. Worcester the sun was going down - tired legs and full hearts.