Kesler Woodward

Snow Flurries, Shelter Bay

Snow Flurries, Shelter Bay
©Kesler Woodward 2006
6 1/4" x 9 1/2"
Watercolor

It snowed here in La Conner the day before yesterday.  After almost thirty years in Alaska, twenty-five of them in Fairbanks, I will admit that I began to grow tired of the cold, but I never once, in all my years there, failed to be excited by falling snow, or ever wished it would stop once it started. I have missed it here on the Pacific Northwest coast, and have looked longingly at the mountains when fresh snowfalls crept down their banks toward sea level.  So when the air was filled unexpectedly with flurries on Monday morning, I stood at the window for a long time and watched in fascination and delight.  When I got to the studio, I immediately knew I had to do a little piece about falling snow.  This view, from our friend and business partner Len Braarud's home, is of the entrance to the Swinomish Channel which separates Fidalgo Island from the mainland, seen through a foreground of floating, swirling, all-too-ephemeral snow.

Madrones at Eagle's Nest

Madrones at Eagle's Nest
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Oil on canvas
40" x 30"

Our home, in an area called Eagle's Nest, is perched on a steep hillside several hundred feet above Skagit Bay on Fidalgo Island. Most of the views from our windows are of the water, of the small islands nearby, of the north end of Whidbey Island which stretches most of the way across the horizon, and of the Olympic mountains to the southwest and Mt. Rainier to the southeast.  But of course I'm at least as interested in the woods in which the house is set. This is the view from one of our windows that looks out not on the bay, but on that bountiful Pacific Northwest forest. I love the bright madrone trees that form a screen through which we see the more somber backdrop of the Douglas Fir forest. 

I had admired madrones on visits to the Pacific Northwest for years, and I painted "portraits" of them for the first time twenty years ago.  But it wasn't until we moved here that I learned, living among them, how much they change over the course of the year.  Their bright red and yellow-green bark becomes dull and quiet in winter, but begins in the spring to deepen in color, until by early summer it is ablaze in the green forest.  Painting here with a tiny, round watercolor brush in transparent oil glazes, I've tried to capture with thousands of overlapping strokes of bright color both the intricacy and the drama of these luxuriant woods.

Plane Tree, Cinque Terre

Plane Tree, Cinque Terre
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
20 1/2" x 28"

In October of 2005 Missy and I spent a week walking from village to village along the Ligurian coast of northeast Italy.  Along with a couple of friends from Seattle, we started in Camogli, just south of Genoa, and walked down to and among the five towns of the Italian Cinque Terre.  The scenery along the footpaths we took through the  steep, dramatic hills and mountains that spill directly into the Mediterranean was incredible.  But not surprisingly, I suppose, I was fascinated with the trees.  This beautiful plane tree, the European equivalent of the American sycamore, was in the plaza of the last town in which we stayed, Monterosso. I loved seeing this huge tree's fancifully colored bark in the context of the equally bright shutters and walls of the Italian village.