Painting wild places...

I fell in love with the Adirondacks back in the summer of 1971, when I drove through the Park for the first time, from Brooklyn to Potsdam. Other than TV and movies, I'd never seen mountains in real life. I knew right then that these rugged, wooded, glacier carved peaks were where I wanted to live. However, Potsdam was actually north of the Park, in the lowlands of the St. Lawrence Valley, and even though the first place I lived was in Nicholville and actually within the boundary of the Adirondack Park - I didn't even know it. Jobs and life and family took over and other than driving through the mountains to get somewhere else, I never really experienced them until I joined the Adirondack Mountain Club in 1996 and started hiking the peaks. That led to painting them and in 2004 I moved to Saranac Lake. Being on a summit, or stepping out of the woods into a high meadow, will always take my breath away.

 It is impossible to explain, but I feel like I belong here - even though I grew up in the dairy country of Wisconsin and my only knowledge of mountains came from pictures and TV westerns. I have also had the chance to experience the big mountains - Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, the Canadian Rockies - and while they too are beautiful and expansive, there is something special about the Adirondacks. 

 I had the great pleasure of painting many of the places I visited (I participated in, and led hiking trips for ADK), but I always had this sense that many others had gone there before me. There were jeep trails  and logging roads everywhere. McMansions built in some of the most scenic views. And while the vistas were expansive, it seemed like you didn't have to go far to reach a highway. Even though that may be true in the Adirondacks as well, there are still places here where it feels like you are far from any roads. The thick forest obliterates the roads (and the sounds of roads) that do wind beneath the trees. 

Maybe it's because I've had more opportunities to get away from civilization here in the Adirondacks. I've hiked some of the "trail less" peaks, climbing through forest so old your feet rarely touched the ground as you clambered over moss covered rocks and fallen trees. And I've been able to sit on a summit, entirely alone, and know that these northern woods are slowly returning to the wild. Healing from the attacks of progress. The history of the Adirondacks can't be told without including the acts of man - forest fires, logging, land-clearing for farming - but with care and stewardship, the forest is slowly reclaiming what was lost.

This is what I try to capture in my paintings.