Inspiration to Paint

Years ago, I got an invitation from a good friend to drive across country with her.  My friend Corliss had moved back home to California to be with her aging parents.  She was recently divorced and needed a change of scenery.  So she had moved back to her home for several years.  Now she wanted to finish up her work on her Doctorate and was moving back to Virginia.  Would I fly out and come back across country with her? Of course I would!

I loved California.  It was the Southwest that really arrested my attention.  I had never seen anything like the desert, the Grand Canyon, the wonderful red rocks,and the big skies.  Everything about the southwest fascinated me.  The majesty of our country, the variety of the landscape was awe inspiring.  I took photos and I sketched.  I painted paintings in my head.  I could not wait to put brush to canvas or panels.  As a landscape painter, I had found a new and vivid landscape to paint.  I was in Love.

We went through southern California first and made the Grand Canyon our destination.  It is impossible to put into words what one feels looking into the depths of the earth at the river far below with clouds casting lavender shadows onto the yellow and red rocks, ever changing, totally enchanting.   This is a holy place. The beauty could move one to tears.  I've never traveled to Europe, but thank God for letting me see parts of my country. Now I yearn to go back and to stay a while and paint.

I have been moved to paint before, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the verdant countryside of Vermont.  A field of sunflowers lifting their heads toward the sun.  A sun rise over one of our eastern rivers, the sun casting it's rosy hue across the lazy waters.  Gathering clouds gliding shadows across rolling hills.  There is so much in nature that wants capturing so much that is ethereal, a willow wisp a glint of light a moment of time that can not be recaptured, maybe by an artist brush?

This is why I strive to paint to be able to impart a feeling, a moment in time forever captured like a rare bird.