Sunday, July 7, 2013

The Wilderness Experience




We spent the morning hiking into Indian Heaven Wilderness.  Todays sojourn into the wilderness felt different with a drier, rougher, and older feeling forest.  I am searching for something in the forest that will inspire a painting and hopefully share the sights, sounds, and smell of this forest.  What is my deliberate artistic intention so as to produce an emotional, aesthetic response to the viewer?  How can my experience here in the forest, beyond the beauty, be expressed in a painting?

There is always a bit of fear when out in nature where there are no roads or people.  What animals lurk back in the trees.  We know that there are bears and cougars.  We work at not getting lost or injured.  It is wonderfully exciting.

We hiked slow as I am still recovering from a knee injury.  This suited Buckley, our elder dog, just fine.    In the past I have been a driven hiker, going fast down the trail.  This injury is forcing me to travel in a more leisurely manner, which allows for more careful observations, and perhaps a more deliberate artistic intention.  

An interesting view of Beargrass.

 Not sure what this is, but it was pretty.

In the Wilderness, we carefully sidestepped this spider.