Across the Prairies

#trip_the_light has been on the road for 10 days now and I am dreadfully behind in my blog posts but wonderfully filled up with painting and writing material for many months to come.

I last posted in Northern Ontario where the beauty was boundless and all encompassing.

I am so in love with the landscape and how it is always changing and revealing different aspects of itself. I am currently reading PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon and it is an eloquent and deep exploration of one particular landscape in Kansas. The book is full of delightful quotes but this one struck me in particular was this one:

I like to think of landscape not as a fixed place but as  path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet.

To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its multiplicity and endless variety, come in. 

-Gretel Ehrlich "Landscape," introduction to Legacy of Light (1987)

This seems to be what we are doing as we travel these marvelous routes and roads and allow the places to speak their own language to us as we pass through them.

     

A wooden suspension bridge leads the way to Ouimet Canyon.

Five New Paintings

The Roaring Inside 2 / 28" x 22" / acrylic on canvas 

This one was done on a road trip across Canada. I stopped at "Shannon Falls" near Squamish, BC in the midst of a rain storm and those falls were roaring! A powerful and daunting sight to behold. Something about waterfalls that triggers a visceral response and echoes something from an ancient realm for me.

River Along my Path / 28" x 22" / acrylic on canvas

This piece is from the same road trip across Canada. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of this river in British Columbia but it was majestically flowing through a deeply carved canon and took my breath away.

Earth Garden

A new painting that I have been returning to day after day as a sanctuary of peace. A hectic, active outward life is balanced by this eternal inner forest.