Anasuya planned a three-day weekend at Juniper Lake in Lassen National Park.
Including the long gravel road entrance it was about an hour and a half from her house in the canyon. We lucked out and found the last campground on the lake with the hulk of Mt. Lassen towering over the other side. In Chico it was dry and summer hot but as we worked our way up highway 32 it felt like we were heading into the cool fresh air of the mountains. It was refreshing to wake up to the cold in the morning and we crouched around a fire as we drank tea and camp coffee.

By 8.30 we were on the trail to the Mt. Harkness lookout. We had lunches packed, art supplies, hats, sunscreen and a days supply of water. The trail was pretty mild as it wound through a forest of assorted northern California conifers and before long we popped out onto a steep meadow of blue, purple, and yellow wildflowers. It felt especially fresh as we made our way under the basalt towers that flanked the headwall. As we made our way onto the final slope to the top I turned to see the entire mountain complex of central northern California come into view. It was a beautiful clear morning and I knew immediately that I was going to do a painting from this day.

We visited with the volunteer at the lookout and took in the view from all directions. It seemed as though we could see all of northern California with Mt. Shasta standing in the distance, faded by the atmosphere of almost eighty miles. We left the lookout and moved just down slope towards a twisted juniper tree standing at the top of a steep slope of scree. The shade felt good and from that position it seemed like we were sitting in the balcony of a grand amphitheater.

We had a relaxing lunch and broke out the art supplies. Anasuya is into stamping and card making and she had taken to using her inks as a sketching medium. She went to work in the bound sketchbook I had given her. The first thing I did was take a full panorama of photos sweeping all the way across with my camera. This was a wide view and I was trying to figure out how I would get all of that into a drawing. I went to work in my 9×6 black field book with a razor sharp felt tip pen. My working method is simple: look and interpret. Make one mark at a time and make it with purpose.

I started drawing the northwest shoulder of Mt. Harkness, and worked my way out and across. When I filled both pages of the book I just flipped the page and kept on going. We both worked for about an hour. I noticed that Anasuya had taken to mixing the water-soluble inks on her forearm to get just the right color, then applying it to her piece. She had taken a completely different view from me, a vertical view as opposed to my horizontal view. She did a nice color sketch and I was happy with the work I did. We gathered our gear and worked our way down the mountain. When the trail finally pulled alongside of the lake we veered off…found a hidden spot, stripped off our clothes and jumped in California style. It felt good to wash off the dust of a day on the trail. We had a great weekend at Juniper Lake and I would recommend it to anyone.

When I got home I assembled the photos I had taken into one long cumbersome panorama photo. I liked the version I did in my sketchbook better. I decided that the painting would come directly from the location drawing. For some time I had been kicking around the idea of a multi-panel painting and decided that the drawing would fit nicely into that format. Each page from the sketchbook got it’s own panel. For the last year or so most of my paintings have been acrylic but I decided to use my other painting medium, water soluble oil paints on this piece. I like the heavy texture and when I paint with them I use my finger, and q-tips to apply the paint. I bought three 11×14, 1.5” deep-cradled Ampersand Art panels. These panels are really nice with a solid painting board mounted on a softwood frame, perfect for multi panel work.

It was tricky drawing the image on all three panels. I had to compact the wide angel to get Mt. Shasta in the picture plane. I started by painting the sky with acrylic paint. I played up the idea of an atmospheric arch to portray a wide view. I started painting with the oils using my fingers and worked the same sweep-around that I did when I was working on the location drawing. The northwest shoulder of Mt. Harkenss first, then out and around. It took about two weeks to complete the painting.

I have spent the last ten years studying the history of landscape painting in Northern California. It is a rich tradition of William Keith, Thomas Hill and even out-of towners like Albert Bierstadt. Their philosophical idea was that the painter should strive to synthesize the poetry of nature with objective fact. That is the attitude I take when painting. I can’t help but think about how my work fits into that rich landscape history.
It’s  like having a dialogue with the masters.

For more on this idea of a dialogue with the masters see the Mt. Shasta page

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One night in 2011 I came home from a troubling day out in the world and started trying to describe what I was feeling in the language of my art. It was a way to blow off steam. What is the language of my art? Simple… Rocks, Water, Trees and Sky. That pretty much covers it. Landscape painting has been the focus of my art since I came back to California in 1997. As a young boy I would feel a sense of awe at being outdoors in an open landscape. I would feel compelled to do something with that emotion, to express it in some way, but I did not know how. These days landscape painting is how I express that sense of awe… my way of interacting with it. As a painter I feel lucky to live in such a rich natural environment.

For me 2011 was decent enough year. I had a job I loved doing, a nice girlfriend and I enjoyed volunteering a portion of my time to the city as an Arts Commissioner. It was a year however that seemed to be a year for worry. It felt to me that the whole world was pretty much in that mode, the worry mode. On that particular night I was feeling right there with everyone else. The path forward seemed a little scary. So I started to draw a picture of that path. As I was working I was thinking of the knife-edge ridge of Castle Craigs that runs south form Chris Bonington’s Cosmic Wall. I also thought of the south summit ridge of Mt. Everest, where the cornices seem to rise above you and bare their teeth as you approach from below. That seems like scary territory to me and it was just the metaphor I was looking for.

The foreground thrusts out in front of you just as the south summit of Everest does and presents the way forward, up, steep and slippery. At the top I added the trees clinging to the side of the ridge, a symbol for the worry I was feeling at the time. The trees serve several purposes for me. They help denote scale, they also help pinpoint the location. These are the Juniper trees that one sees in northern California. The main point of the trees however is that they represent the struggle that is the cause of the worry that I was trying to articulate. They are ascending the ridge, bent from the wind and silent in their journey as they toil against the elements. The fog and mist is blown through a gap in the middle hiding then showing the towers that present the way forward. The ridge meets up with the summit headwall on the other side and all angles point out to an unseen future. As I worked I wondered if I could paint uncertainty.

The drawing took about thirty minutes and by the time I finished it I had slipped out of the worry mode into a frame of mind I can’t even remember. I was intrigued by the drawing and decided to make a painting from it, which took about a week. The size is 11×14. The medium is acrylic, which is the medium I feel most in control of. The title is The Hurricane Gap.

The path forward is always a question mark. In times of uncertainty that path can seem downright scary. Painting is one way for me to navigate that path… that and the knowledge that despite worry and fear the only way forward… is forward.

I set out to paint an emotion, to translate it, maybe even exorcise it into something else,
a metaphor for worry and uncertainty.

I wonder if that is what people will see when they look at this painting?