at the water's edge

Seeing our place from afar really shakes our perspective and greatly minimizes our importance.

I've been thinking about aerial views a lot these past couple of years, especially as I fly in and out of Missoula, over vast mountain ranges. I study those views from my window seat. (I must always have a window seat, not only for the view, but also because I can create my little nest up against that window.) I try to imagine myself simultaneously in two places, on the ground and in the air. Am I gigantic or am I teeny? Am I surrounded by that which grows out of the ground or am I not really a part of it? Am I vulnerable in both places or protected in one?

More importantly for me as an artist, aerial views provide a gallery of inspiring artistic forms. Look at the pattern in this aerial view of the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan, China, and India. Surrealistically, the snow capped ridges appear to be a tapestry of thick, woolly, twisted skeins. But it is of this world, albeit photographed beyond the Earth's atmosphere from the Space Shuttle, Discovery in 1993.

I'll start by figuring out how to draw the ridges, folds, and gaps of mountain tops and move on to possibly painting these amazing earth designs. Can we imagine the designs of the Earth in two places at once? That which is right in front of us everyday and that which is so real, so grand, so expansive, so universal, and yet rarely ever seen?