Big Rock

For some time, I had wanted to paint a larger than usual landscape painting. Then one day during the summer of 2002, I discovered the north fork of the Mokelumne River. I rappelled down into a deep canyon and under a tall, very tall highway bridge. Hugging the weathered concrete wall of the bridge footing to my left, an abrupt drop-off to my right with raging water several feet below, I faced up river. Big Rock towered six stories or more above, the distant bend in the river three hundred yards away, rocks bigger than delivery trucks. A bald eagle circled high above the distant mountain. To the sound of rushing water and the pounding of my heartbeat, a portal opened and I was transported into a great, mystical landscape.

 “Can I paint this? Do I have the courage to try?”

 A few days later, I carried easel and paints through brush and poison oak down and farther down to the much too narrow platform beneath the bridge.  Here, I began a small canvas – a scaled down version of what the larger, more developed painting would be. Soon overwhelmed, I sat on the bridge footing looking over the edge toward rushing water, thinking, “I don’t know how to do this.” Over the next week or so, I painted several small studies of this magnificent scene. Each fell short.

A year earlier I had turned away from my familiar cityscape motif in San Francisco. In my arrogance, I thought I could paint anything. But painting landscapes in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada was a potent dose of humility. Painting Big Rock was a powerful lesson in both art and spiritual practice.

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