More Travels Via Painting Memories

Our last blog post got me to thinking how our paintings enable us to travel in our minds to places to which we wish we could physically return.  And what better vehicle could there be than writing about those memories as I gaze longingly at photos of those paintings.  Yes, traveling in one's mind can be healthy without mushrooms.  So, on these cold, dark, snowy days, why not stay the course a little longer.

While this blog is a continuation of our representational art, perhaps future blogs will highlight whimsical subjects and, for me, a few favorite portraits.  we've posted on our website, www.corneliusstudio.com.  For now, here are a few more paintings Amanda and I spent extra time revisiting.

Denali Remembered

Alkyd on canvas. 24 x 30 inches

What a hike!  We parked the car at Denali National Park's Eilsen Visitor Center, shouldered our packs and only pausing for a photo on which this painting is based, descended to the McKinley River.  We timed crossing the heavily braided river with morning hours when water levels would be at their lowest since the trek necessitated wet feet and the higher the water, the wetter we'd be -- not to mention higher water would increase chances of getting swept off our feet, if we even dared to risk it.

   In those glacial flour laden waters visibility was less than the width of a piece of dental floss.  We made it by probing the depth of each channel with long poles we carried to give us extra stability and to use to turn ourselves into human tripods. Safely on the other side, we dodged crevasses as we crossed the silt and rock covered Muldrow Glacier to camp for the night.  Morning gave us a fresh start up Denali's foothills where we climbed to the highest elevation we've ever hiked -- where vegetation was almost nil. Surely any photography up there would be of a barren landscape.  But -- see the next painting...

High Refuge

Oil on Canvas  16 inches x 20 inches

Ahead, something moved.  No way!  What was a flock of Dall sheep ewes doing at that elevation?  And what a background for a photo of them!  "High Refuge" depicts what we found that day --  except it needed an extra something for it's composition.  Yes, a transplant -- the sheep in the right foreground came from a photo I took of another flock on Sheep Mountain another mountain range south, close to the Matanuska River.

High Country Winter

Oil on canvas. 16 x 20 inches

Now that I've introduced you to that lone Dall sheep from Sheep Mountain, let me introduce you to more of the flock as we found them that fine winter day.  The base of the mountain looked deceptively close when we spotted them from the Glenn Highway.  OK, it would have been close in summer, but under several feet of snow and lacking skiis or snow shoes, the definition of close changes. 

But, when we reached the wind blown slopes, where you could see your feet again, excitement swelled with each step as we crept towards the ridge.  Out of sight we closed the gap between us hoping that they would still be there when we revealed our position.  Success!  Not only were they there, but they seemed totally unperturbed by three interlopers.  Needless to say I shot more than a roll of film as we hunkered down on that ridge determined to look no more threatening than a ground squirrel.

White Rocks on Red Mountain

Oil on Canvas  20 x 24 inches

A friend and I took an early spring hike in yet one more mountain range further away from Denali.  Our goal -- Red Mountain on the east side of the Chugach Mountains.  We reached the base on skis where much to our joy we found a snow-free ridge to ascend.  We only expected to see exhilarating beauty and that's all we did find until just as we decided it was time to turn around, we flushed three rock ptarmigan.  Much to our relief they only flew over the ridge to land in the south facing rocks.

The contrast between those white birds against the red rocks, where they landed, proved camouflage dosn't always work as well as it's meant to.  But it sure made for remarkable photos.  I wonder if those birds were aware of how exposed they had become.

Raven's Roost Ridge

Watercolor  9 x 12 inches

This time the artist is Kären but the photo chronicler of the scene, me.  Raven's Roost is the mountain that shields Petersburg from the golden rays of sun all but a few hours during our short winter days.  While most hikers approach this landmark on a US Forest Service trail (coincidentally named the Raven's Roost Trail) which originates in town, there is a back way.  A no longer maintained trail -- the markers are all that remain, but not the pathway -- can be accessed from the Twin Creek Road on the south side of the Ridge.  I was surprised how many animal trails eased the climb to the ridge and what a fine view it led to -- the north end of Wrangell Narrows and beyond that Kären documented with her watercolors.  A less expected treat was finding a number of Sitka black-tail deer with new-born fawns.  Maybe that's why that black bear was also present.  

Northern Exposure

Alkyd on canvas  12 x 24 inches

As long as we seem to be looking at paintings of high places, how about high latitudes?  I based this painting on a photo Kären took on the north side of the Brooks Range in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  It started out as an abstract piece that somehow morphed into something more realistic.  I originally included a caribou and a half with the intention of adding an entire herd, but it looks like they migrated on.  Maybe they joined the two that were watching Kären when she obeyed nature's call in that area.  While she faced away from the caribou and unaware of their fascination with her, she was startled to see her fellow rafters with binoculars looking in her direction.  She reports having finished her mission in record time.  It seems she was between the caribou and her fellow nature enthusiasts.  Talk about awkward feelings!

Tranquility

Watercolor

Back down south, here in sub-tropical Alaska, Karen painted Crystal Mountain, the highest mountain on Mitkof Island.  A popular recycled-plastic boardwalk connects a paved parking lot with Blind Slough Rapids where fishers of King Salmon in summer and hikers, whenever the snow yields, find refuge from the stresses of society.  It's a testimony to benefits of the US Forest Service providing multiple uses of the Tongass National Forest.  Had Kären included more of the critters we've spotted in the area, she would have added multiple species of ducks, swans, porcupines, moose, and black bears while friends would add brown bears to the list.  Oh dear, I forgot to mention one of Kären's favorite critters -- red squirrels. 

Way back when -- I even camped on top of Crystal Mountain -- the route to which follows a rocky subalpine ridge past tiny tarns (small mountain ponds) that make you want to just surrender and let them be your destination.  Oh, so much to see and so little time!  You can see that snow-covered ridge just to the left of the summit of Crystal Mountain in Kären's painting.

Now "what the?" you might be thinking.  No, this one is not a painting, but an example of Kären's creative mind in action.  I'll let you figure out what she found, and the two of you who made it all the way through this post, can tell us what you think.  Hint: it's not a double exposure.

Revisiting Memories through Art

A Christmas visit with our daughter, Amanda, ended up with us looking at some of our favorite paintings that reside as copies on our computers.  We also challenged our mental acuity to complete a puzzle we had made from one of Kären's painting.  Wow -- her brushwork! Her visual surprises.  It made me appreciate that painting so much more.  

So given it's the end of the old year, I thought I'd post images of some of the paintings from past years where the back stories we shared with Amanda felt like we were in a time capsule -- and, of course, the puzzle.  In this post I'll stick to representational paintings -- except the puzzle.

Alaska Monolith

Alkyd on panel 12 x 16 inches

During a visit to Alaska's Matanuska Valley, I revisited some of the areas where we spent so many happy hours hiking, skiiing and photographing the joys of living in Alaska.  And yet, somehow, after countless trips into the Hatcher Pass area of the Talkeetna Mountains, I never noticed this peak.  Talk about an artists special abilities to see what so many miss!  Hopefully this painting, based on a photo I took that day, rectifies that problem.

One Last Thing

Acrylic diptych, Each 9x12 inches

Creating Shutterfly calendars during our visit led us to focusing on Kärens photographs of ravens.  Which leads me to include one of my favorite paintings by her, a diptych of a pair of ravens with one of them getting in the last word.  In case you didn't notice, each painting is of the same bird.  Yes, that's one of the advantages painting has over photography.

Along the Cutoff

Alkyd on panel 12 x 16 inches

It was May and yet winter still lingered along the Haines Cutoff between Haines, Alaska and Haines Junction, Yukon.  Ahead of us, as we drove north, a mountain glisteneded like it was coated in ice.  We had to get photos of it.  And then a pullout appeared.  Look closely and you'll see a willow ptarmigan that greeted us when we turned off the highway.

Along the Dempster

Watercolor. 9 x 12 inches

Kären captured this view during one of our very favorite drives -- the Dempster Highway leading from near Dawson City, Yukon, 478 miles (769 km) north to Inuvik, Northwest Territories.  While the route is an artists and photographers dream, it does present several challenges -- a rocky road surface made to shred tires and the further north you drive mosquitoes so thick that when you face into a stiff wind, they take advantage of the shelter you provide and your back look like it's been spray painted with pepper.  But, the views and wildlife -- oh my.

El Cabezone

Alkyd on Canvas  20 x 24 inches

Gazing out our plane's window as we approached Albuquerque, New Mexico, we viewed 

in the distance

 one reason why the southwest holds such mystique -- El Cabezone.  We had to see it up close.  Sure enough, in a couple of days we were bouncing down a dirt road closing in on a trail leading up the volcanic plug.  But, wait, the most artistic view of El Cabezone seemed to be looking up a stream bed we crossed on the way.  So here it is.  For the record, we were able to climb half way up the mountain until it transformed from a hike into a technical climb.

Baird's Retreat

Watercolor  14 x 21 inches

To keep up her teaching certificate, Kären had to take so many hours of continuing education.  And, somehow a class on brown bears qualified.  To meet the course requirements she had to complete either a written paper or a painting.  In true Groth fashion she did both, with the paper including illustrations, plus a separate painting -- each one being completed, in true Kären fashion, on butcher paper -- a surface not considered to be archival.  I was so taken by the painting of Baird Glacier I convinced her to create another version on a surface (watercolor paper) we could have framed and enjoy without watching it deteriorate.

Bessie at the Helm

Watercolor  9 x 13 inches

Kären based this painting on a photograph I took of my kayaking. companion, our golden retriever Bessie, as we kayaked out of LeConte Bay in the USFS Stickine - LeConte Wilderness Area.  After two nights camping 

in the fiord

, the second near the face of LeConte Glacier, a drizzle had descended on us.  So I decided to head back to Petersburg with Bessie pointing the way home -- well maybe would have if she had been awake.  Come to think of it, that night camping close to the glacier is worthy of a blog post because, let's say, it failed to meet the definition of uneventful.

  

Four on the Point

Alkyd on Canvas. 18x 24 inches

17.5 miles south of Petersburg the only bridge across Blind Slough leads to the Crystal Lake Fish Hatchery. We never fail to stop in the middle of the structure to enjoy the views both up and down the Slough while we try to spot wildlife from bears to swans.  I based this painting on the view further up the Slough where four alders that grow on a point of land jutting into the Slough were backlit by the morning sun and as it's winter coat of ice was relinquishing it's frozen grip 

Tongass Backwater  

Alkyd on canvas. 18 x 24 inches

In days of yore we had a fleet of watercraft.  A 17-foot fiberglass boat, a 17-foot Klepper kayak and a 17-foot aluminum canoe -- all purchased under different circumstances with no consideration of length.  The day I took the reference photo for this painting a friend and I paddled the canoe upstream from the bridge across Blind slough -- come to think of it -- past the alders in the above painting "Four on the Point."  There we landed at the mouth of a tiny stream that used to drain a large pond created by a beaver dam.  I say "used to" since the beaver are no longer there so neither is the pond.  But, I digress.  I painted "Tongass Backwater" from the mouth of the stream.  For the record the day we discovered the pond was missing, we dragged the canoe around log jams and over all-matter of foot-entangling brush (never finding enough water to float the canoe) only to discover a grassy meadow behind the beaver dam.

And now, (sound the trumpets) Kären's painting that we had made into a puzzle.

Why Snowmen Don't Have Noses

Watercolor  16 x 20 inches

Kären let her imagination run wild as she joyfully painted this rendition of the view from our living room window.  Somehow our local deer herd seems to relish carrots they have stolen from the snowmen while our house has been moved across the street.

And finally, the "Why Snowmen Don't Have Noses" puzzle.  With only  252 pieces it still proved to be a real challenge.

Another Kären Sports Spectacular

Kären recently got blueberry stains on our whitish, probably synthetic, rug from a dentist appointment.  Yep -- a dentist appointment.  The appointment led to a chain reaction that precipitated a sports spectacular rivaling a hail-Mary pass at the final three seconds of a Super Bowl game.

All was normal at the appointment (she only has two cavities) until the dentist's assistant pushed the button to raise the dental chair to a sitting position -- which felt to Kären like she was an astronaut being launched into space -- thus precipitating the onset of Kären's vertigo -- which led to her feeling significantly "off."

So, as she lay on our living room sofa with her head still in orbit the next morning, I brought her a bowl of her favorite cereal topped with blueberries while she scanned the morning world trauma reports on her Apple laptop.  Now, to reduce the weight of that laptop by 0.00002 micro-ounces, engineers have created a thin outer-case made up of nothing but slipperiness, as thin as a puddle of olive oil splashed on our linoleum kitchen floor.  

Thus, when reaching for her bowl of oatmeal topped with a pile of  blueberries -- as she attempted to set her laptop aside, it skidded out of her fingers -- which precipitated her unsuccessfully trying to save the laptop from crashing to the floor -- which precipitated her bowl of cereal topped with blueberries flying into the space over the hand-woven in Denmark wool blanket that covered her at that instant and, coincidentally over our whitish probably synthetic living room rug.

That's when gravity did what gravity was designed to do -- deposit that now upside down bowl of cereal over Kären's favorite blanket, the fawn decoration on her favorite T-shirt and our whitish, probably synthetic, rug carpet with those aerodynamically designed blueberries and, coincidentally, the oatmeal -- which miraculously enabled Kären to forget her vertigo for about 5.67 seconds.  Need I mention that our ensuing cleanup took a shade longer, but that's another story.

Now, the reason I relate this woeful story to you, dear reader, is to inform you of a technique to relieve suffering from any sort of trauma (from spilled blueberries on your probably synthetic whitish rug to misplacing your glasses when you sit down to read the morning trauma on your slippery Apple MacBook Air computer.

Perhaps this is a good post to share a few images of, not our whitish, probably synthetic rug, but Kären's photos of blueberries in their natural habitat.

Come on?  That's barely a start.

That's a bit better

I Still think someone was here first.

Nice try, but these are crowberries.

Nope -- red huckleberries.  Only for you if you're color blind.

Now we're talking!

Tongass Views

Mitkof Isand's history includes some serious clearcut logging, which in turn, led to some serious road building, which in turn provides access to...denuded landscapes resembling a heavily bombed Ukranian war zone.  So, though I'm opposed to peppering this world with more grim reminders of the conflict between heavy industry and nature, driving on those roads can temporarily lead through some paintable locations.

Throughout southeast Alaska many of those logging roads soon become alder thickets as plant succession works it's wonders.  But, before nature has put the band aid on what man has wrought, a few paintings have peered back at me from my easel as a result of stopping at pullouts before those roads became impassible.

And, as an aside, one led to what is probably the worst hike of my life.  On that day I sauntered with our old golden retriever, Bessie, up one of those overgrown logging roads.  Slipping between alders was as easy as eating rhubarb pie... and I congratulated myself for choosing such a clever route up Sam Peak.  I drooled at the prospect of photographing an unobstructed view of the Stikine River watershed that would unveil like the drawing of a movie theater curtain once I crested the top.  

But, when I reached the landing where logs were once loaded onto logging trucks, my smile evaporated.  While perhaps only a bit more than 100 yards remained to traverse the clearcut between the "road" and the tree line above, it might have been easier to charge through a wall of angry professional football players to gain that short distance.

The problem: while loggers are after logs they can sell, they leave behind tangles of tree limbs, tree tops and felled trees they deem unmerchantable.  And, on this steep slope, there were piles of them.  It looked like they had just felled the forest and walked away.  I found myself faced with piles of logs I had trouble just climbing over myself much less dragging a golden retriever.  We'd struggle to get on top of a monstrous log only to discover it only led to a dead end or a gain of a couple of feet before we had to abandon our perch.  From there we would descend into a maze of tree limbs that made each step a struggle to extract my legs plus a dog, only to reach another similar sized felled tree.  Repeat!  Mid-maze I contemplated turning back more than once, but that looked just as forboding as forging ahead.  Surely, surmounting the next log would reveal an open path.  Wrong.

But, I made it.  There, above the maze I found easy going along deer trails leading to the ridge and what I was sure would be a view worth the worst of struggles.  AAGH!  Au contraire, all I could see were tiny glimpses of something through a dense wall of trees.  My struggle had been in vain and I still had to get back down the mountain.

Oh dear, I've digressed from my intention in writing this post: sharing paintings of views I've discovered during explorations up these back roads.  

Here are a few:

Tongass Vista

I based this studio piece on a photo I took on my favorite logging road until we replaced our Mazda Tribute with a Honda CR-V.  The problem:  A dip in the road that requires high clearance.

OK, This seems to be my only painting from a road I can no longer traverse.  But, I've made plein air paintings in areas I accessed via roads that the US Forest Service has retained for public access.

Three Lakes Meander

The Three Lakes Loop provides access to a plethora of logging units and a popular system of trails connecting (surprise) three lakes.  This painting depicts a meadow near the trail leading to Crane Lake.

Favorite Meadow

The Ohmer Creek Trail leads to a wetland complex that I hiked into so I could argue with a "pack" of mosquitos while I painted it's "portrait.

Springtime on the Beaver Meadow

The view from the start of the Crane Lake Trail.

Last Bend

A particularly attractive spot is the access road to Greens Camp, a campground in what is the only Alaska State Recreation Area on our island. 

Deep into the Forest

This former logging road now leads to Petersburg's newest water reservoir on Cabin Creek.

Beyond the Bend

I used to park where the Three Lakes Road crosses Falls Creek.  There I could access what was one of my former favorite places to paint on this island.  But now, alders lay strewn across the creek (perhaps the victims of flooding) plus the rugged hike defies my aging body.  Sigh!

Air Drop

My last few blog posts included the subject of flying.  But not all my adventures involving planes in Alaska included me as a passenger.  

As a game biologist working in Anchorage in the 1970s, let's say I didn't fit the mold.  Hunting dominated the philosophy of powers to be in the Game Division and any other values of wildlife would take care of itself.  But, I had become an avid photographer so my values were misaligned with my employer.  Thus, I took several opportunities to step away from my job including leave without pay or vacation time.

So for one two-week break I hired on with the US National Park Service as a wildlife biologist.  I still can't figure how I pulled that off, but there, Rollie and I were assigned the task of documenting caribou calving in an area north of Denali National Park.  It's an area which President Jimmy Carter later designated as a National Monument in 1978 before legislation added it to the Park under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).  President Carter signed ANILCA into law in December, 1980, just before the end of his term.

Travel 20 miles north down the Toklat River from the Denali Park Road and you'll come close to our assigned area.   Incidentally it's not too far from the location of an abandoned school bus on the Stampede Trail where an idealist adventurer, Chris McCandless, later died in 1992 from starvation, possibly brought on by eating poisonous wild-potato seeds.  The book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer documents McCandless's ill-fated adventure.

But, I digress.  Our plan was to backpack down the Toklat River drainage from the Denali Park Road where we'd set up camp and search the surrounding area for calving caribou.  And to lighten our load, our food would be air-dropped to us.  Nice!  Did I mention the need to wear mosquito netting head gear on that hike because of...take a guess?

For several days before our departure we packed food items on our menus in plastic bags so we could burn the bags after consuming our meals rather than keeping opened packaging around our camp to attract grizzlies plus having to pack it out at the end of our project.  Pure genius.

So contents of jars of Tang (an orangish drink), a tasty variety of Mountain House freeze dried dinners, instant cereal, powdered milk, Pilot Bread crackers, were each opened and transferred into plastic bags.  Perfect.  All we had to do was pack them in a large sack for our supervisor, Will, to air drop at our camp site.  We were proud at how efficiently we had packed that bag.

Now, I'd been chartering planes for awhile and knew a Super Cub's stalling speed was somewhere around 40 miles per hour.  I knew the Cessna Will would be flying would be flying faster than that but somehow I envisioned a low, slow pass and our food container gently leaving the plane as Will sent it our way making a mellow descent onto the tundra which would cushion the fall. 

Time for the air drop arrived and I remember being shocked how fast Will was flying as he approached far above the elevation that I had imagined.  I mean, really high above us.  That's when the duffle containing all our carefully packed food shot out of the plane like a US Air Force air to air missile rocketing towards the ground, not tundra, but a gravel stream bed.

Then, it hit...exploding in a cloud of freeze dried peas, beans, lentils, rice, chunk of ham, eggs, powdered Tang, powdered milk, cereal, Pilot Bread and whatever else was on our planned menu, rising like smoke over the bag.  In an instant our fine dining pleasure was turned into one item on the menu for three meals per day.  Need I say, Tang flavored milk isn't a good addition to egg-infused rice and beans.   Anticipation for our meals for the next two weeks didn't exactly qualify for the adjective, eager.

By the way, we may have seen one caribou in those two weeks but we never got close enough to be sure.  However, except for the dining part, it was a fine camping trip.

Lacking any digital images from those days, I'm attaching a few photographs Kären recently took of (to stay sort of on the subject of "aviators" and food) great blue herons.  Much to our delight our backyard may have become a heron rookery because last year we had two nesting pairs and this year it doubled to four nests.

Dinner time!  Scene seen in our yard.  Sorry for the screening vegetation, but the heron's desire for privacy prevailed.

A bit more visible while awaiting the next "food delivery."

An impressive sight in our yard and this is only a "baby" in pre-flight training.

Finally a clear view

Wait a minute!  What are you doing up there?  These photos are supposed to be about aviation and food!.