Description
It’s fascinating to me how inspiration strikes an artist. In this case, a beginning point for a whole series of paintings started a few years back, one late afternoon on a rainy day in the dead of winter. I was hiking a trail that follows the edge of land above the ocean between Ecola Park, and Indian Beach on the north Oregon Coast. That day the light was especially dramatic and along with the grays and greens so typical of the Pacific Northwest an image just stuck in my minds eye (I can still see it today). I started a painting as soon as I returned to the studio but despite my best efforts, it flopped.
One of the lessons I’ve learned as a painter is to not let myself become discouraged with the inevitable disasters that occasionally come out of my studio. So, back to work I went and over time that one simple spark of inspiration became a whole series of paintings, the most recent one being Foggy Perch.
My idea was to return to the place in my memory where Fogbound was painted and continue along the trail to where we are looking back at the treed island and coastline veiled by fog and sea mist. The trees, cliffs and rocks speak of the relentless effects of the weather and rugged coastal environment in which they survive and in fact thrive.
