previous exhibitions

NORTHERN LIGHT

Alaska Pacific University
Grant Hall Gallery
Anchorage, Alaska
November 5 - 28, 2004

The quality of the light in every region is special and unique to that particular landscape. Light, and the emotional impact that it can have on the viewer, has always been a key determinant for me in my choices of what I want to paint.

In my travels through the North over the last year, I have focussed on studying the quality of the light right at dawn and how it changes in those first few minutes as it moves across the landscape. The ever changing design potential that occurs in that first half hour of morning light has always been an area of fascination for me as a painter. For this show, the work focusses on two unique and special areas.

In the summer of 2003, a bush pilot friend flew me over the Juneau icefields which lie between the Haines/Juneau region of Southeast Alaska and the coastal mountains of British Columbia. We took off in the pre-dawn hours so that we were flying directly over the icefields right as the first light hit the icefields and mountain valleys of this spectacular region. I photographed, sketched and gathered ideas for a series of paintings of that particular area from those flights.

In addition, in the Fall of 2003 I spent time exploring some of the river valleys which run adjacent to the road that goes into the little town of McCarthy in the St. Elias range. I found the quality of the light in this region of interior Alaska to be truly unique and different from other areas in the North.

The show includes a number of canvasses of the icefields at dawn and a large canvas of the Chitina River at first light. Also included in the show are a series of landscape collages of the Juneau icefield in the early morning light.