Lake, Eastern Sierras

Description

This July, I went to Yosemite on a four‑day plein air painting trip with a painter friend. We completed several paintings on site and made numerous sketches. The landscape there is overwhelming — dramatic mountains and vast vistas, trees that have endured fire, drought, and storm, sturdy beings of great age, twisted yet resilient; lush green meadows with streams running through; and areas recovering from fire, where grasses and wildflowers are beginning to return. When I came home, I painted for days, finishing some of my plein air work and using sketches and photo references for others.

This painting was done at home. You can see the snowy mountains on the left and patches of snow on the range opposite the lake. I’m fond of it, in part because of the range of watercolor techniques used and the reversal of the usual approach — far less detail in the foreground and much more in the distant mountains.