In love with landscape

My family and I just got back from a week in Lake Tahoe, and feel fresh and new thinking of those beautiful vistas and cool mountain air.  We watched the drama of salmon spawning, hiked up and down and up and up, and sat still and breathed in the scent of vanilla from the Ponderosa and Jeffrey pines.  For two of our days there, we  walked through a hushed wonderland of snow — in shirt sleeves because the sun was so warm.   What a wonderful place.

The natural world centers me spiritually, yet I’m prone to forgetting that fact day to day because of my struggles with the heat and itchiness of my home state.  It’s beautiful, too, but six months of the year it makes me uncomfortable enough to estivate, a word I learned when I moved to North Carolina.

The beautiful landscapes I’ve visited crop up often in my work.  These two are from my travels in the Southwest US:

 

 

 

 

 

This rushing river under the Northern lights is based on a photo from my friend Scotty’s trip to Alaska.

 

 

This is the view from my wide bedroom window (lucky me):

 

 

 

Some of my landscapes are based on fantasies or juxtapositions of places I’ve been.   This large silk scarf includes a view from the courtyard of the Cloisters in New York City,  a tree from my imagination, a woman from Renaissance art, and a dragon from ancient Chinese art. 

 

This tree in the snow with a pink sky is pure fantasy.

 

 

 

This long hanging landscape uses some artistic license, as the landscape is based on walks in North Carolina, but the cranes are Japanese.   It’s a beautiful piece on which to meditate!

I’m grateful for all of the beautiful places in the world I’ve been lucky enough to visit and meditate on.