Kesler Woodward

Denali in Winter Dreams of Summer

Denali Dreams
©Kesler Woodward 2005-2006
Acrylic on canvas
48" x 60"

I worked on this painting for more than six weeks, thinking several times that I was done and moving on to other images, only to find myself turning back to this one, adding more layers, pushing the colors and surfaces again and again to try to capture an elusive idea.

I've done large canvases like these from time to time for the last ten years, not really knowing where their strangely heightened colors come from, and never knowing as I'm working on them exactly where they're going. They are perhaps my favorites among my own paintings, but they take the longest and are the most frustrating, the hardest paintings for me to do, as what I'm after is a half-understood mystery to me, at best.

A few weeks ago, trying to respond to a request from Anchorage Daily News Arts Editor Mark Baechtel for some thoughts on the New Year, I realized for the first time that these paintings almost always come in the dark of winter, when I am longing for the return of light.  I think that part, at least, of what they are about is my feeling that the land must feel the same way, that it dreams in its winter slumber weirdly, imperfectly, but fiercely, about the remembered and coming light of summer.

Cascades

Cascades
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Oil on canvas
30" x 40"

Last winter, our first in the Pacific Northwest, was unusually dry, and it wasn't until well into spring that the relatively meager snowpack's melting filled the smaller rivers toward the sea with turbulent water and detritus.  This winter has been a wet one, with steady rain in the lowlands and snows that alternately accumulate and melt away with passing fronts of varying temperatures.  Already, the streams are overflowing their banks. On a sunny day in January the rushing waters gleam with brilliance I didn't expect to see for months, and already the fallen logs work their way downstream, their torn shapes and polished surfaces a testimony to the power of the torrent.

Denali Park Birches

Denali Park Birches
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Oil on board
18" x 12" (image)

This stand of beautiful birches is just a few miles inside the entrance to Denali National Park, very near the Park Headquarters.  Though much of the Park is above treeline, and most of my own Park paintings have been of tundra and snow-covered peaks, I am just as attracted to the quieter parts of the preserve--to the still ponds, tiny streams, and groves of birch and spruce. One of the first birches I ever painted a "portrait" of, more than a quarter century ago, was just a mile or so from these trees.

Old Growth at Rockport

Old Growth at Rockport
©Kesler Woodward 2005
Watercolor
12" x 18" (image)

I've been back several times now to this beautiful stand of old growth forest in Rockport State Park, just an hour east of us on the North Cascades Highway.  Every time I go, it's different.  On this day, the sun was out and the ancient Douglas firs, cedars, and bigleaf maples seemed to glow with brilliant light.  I'd never have thought these woods could look and feel so youthful, so full of energy and vibrant, growing life.