To answer my own question, posted previously this month - I have  proceeded to a final outcome, to work on both panels and double the size of the painting which I hope to submit for the exhibit THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND. The piece is informed  by awe for the wind and  my walks and photographs of White Cliff Fen and Forest Reserve, near Egg Harbor WI.  The exhibit opens November 10 - December 22  at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay WI. This is the second time I have been invited by the Door County Land Trust to participate in an art event under their sponsorship- I am always thrilled to be included in events like this.

First stages  of the diptych sometime in late June, when I decided to start a second painting to expand the picture.

Late July, the piece is nearing completion. Not an exact interpretation of the area but the influence is evident.  I  worked from a photograph, usually I do a smaller plein air study and return with it to my studio but I was not up to hauling gear and was more interested in getting a feeling for the walk, how did the forest feel to me, what had happened here,  why was I feeling an extreme sadness walking through this place? This  feeling of loss  hit me while I was painting it, weeks after I was there to observe. I sat quietly, looking at what I was sure was a young Beech tree and thought about the beech trees I once had on my property in West Bend WI, and how I loved those smooth gray trees, it was a grove of 14 trees until a storm hit in 1998.  I lost only two  but they were old, I could barely get my arms around any of them.  The city had built a sidewalk that curved to allow for the trees there, someone else loved Beech trees as much as I did. All those thoughts came back to me as I walked White Cliff.

Young Beech Tree- White Cliff Reserve

Moss growing where there once was tree, moss grows without roots- I just realized that after reading The Language of Flowers - a novel by Vanessa Diffenbach(Spelling?)

  I worked on the painting throughout the months of June and July, and found myself thinking about the forest fires in Colorado and then the forests I used to know in Australia, miles of  eucalyptus forest, sub tropical rain forest, trees like Davidson Plum and Firewheel, trees I once saw every day, drinking in the aroma of their mist in the hills near Byron Bay-trees I knew as a kid in Iowa.

Door County was hit hard last fall with wind, and during the winter, ice storms played a hand as well, adding weight to already weakened trees, the path was often punctuated by leviathans of maple and beech, uprooted, tentacles of root mass exposed to the elements, and large cauldrons of unearthed soil and rock, now make room for new layers of foliage, and cubby holes for a fox.  I find myself torn between my love of open spaces, long view vistas and an  attraction to water, contrast that to the closeness and temple-like  spaces of the woods.  Sometime back in the 1980's I was camped in a tipi in Iowa, and when a tornado came through,  we  held down the poles as the wind walked into the side, the heavier  door (eastside) pole,  of pine, was stuck into the ground an extra 6 inches after that wind left us, we were the only tipi left standing in what had been a tornado in north central Iowa, fast forward about ten years, I sat through devastation over ten years ago when I lived in West Bend WI, old-growth maple, my mother maple I called it,  twisted ten feet above the ground and came down on the neighbors garage- if it had fallen few inches to the north and I would have been hit  with its mass.  On the other side of the house, three huge ancient beech trees toppled from the roots.  I lost a lot that year, but rehabilitated my yard and my life and by the next year was living in Door County.

 detail  WIND TEMPLE


There is hope and encouragement on the heels of any  natural disaster, and that is where my  thoughts traveled while working on the paintings inspired  by White Cliff.