Bridal Veil

"Bridal Veil" - oil on cradled panel.  11" x 14" x .5"  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

This week I worked with a "seascape" closer to home - Bridal Veil Falls.  It is really a "gorgescape" since the scene is the Columbia Valley River Gorge and not the ocean.   This is painted entirely with Michael Harding handmade oil paints, which are non-toxic and have no smell whatsoever.  A lovely relief when it is too chilly to open windows. 

The photo inspiration for this painting was taken during a family hike in the gorge.  Using the Notan app, I converted it into a value study and then jumped off from there.

Bridal Veil

photo inspiration

Closer to home in Portland, this past week was the Hackenberg Award ceremony downtown, where Dr. Jeremy Spoon and Richard Arnold received a prestigious award for their work with Numic peoples in uniting tribes and government agencies in collaborative projects which reconnect culture, land, plants and animals.

Now this is a really interesting story of hope and cooperation in a country which is presently quite divided.  A Jewish guy from Detroit (via Nepal) ends up in Nevada working with the southern Paiute and other tribes.  An unlikely path!

He and tribal leader Arnold ultimately got the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies to allow re-vegetation projects, ceremonial harvests and other gatherings on federal lands AND convinced 16 tribes to work together with the very government with which they shared a traumatic history.  Now there is way more to the whole process than that one sentence (including a decade of patience, red tape, deep listening and negotiations).  But the gist of it is just that - an unlikely collaboration amongst people on opposite sides of fences and of history.  You can read more about some of their projects here.

One of their projects which delights me is the revegetation of 92 acres of land over  low level radioactive waste buried underground.   During the ceremony, Arnold said:  "If the land is sick and out of balance, so are we."  And so the tribes and the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies came together to plant and heal the land.  Using a mix of native and scientific methods, seeds and plants were place in the ground and the healing began.  And much to the surprise of the U.S. Forest Service, the native methods of planting (in the spring) were more successful than the scientific method (plant in fall and winter).  The insects have returned to where once nothing lived.  The land and the people have begun to heal.  Hope for the planet and hope for the people - a good news story during angsty times!

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​becoming SUNRISE
​a collaboration by Mary W. Cox and Jen Walls

64 pages, full color illustrations.  Softcover

A small press publication by Writing Better Books.

​Get your copy here!

Jen and Mary