Color Chaser

Gunflint Fall, 11 x 7

I've been painting the fall colors pretty hard this season. In the past I've always made sure to get a painting or two under  my belt before the leaves fall and I've gotten some good paintings but I've always felt like I let the season get away from me. It's a fleeting one after all.  This year I came up with a "hit list" of scenes I wanted to paint: scenes with big views and lots of air, scenes that were closer to or actually of Grand Marais, scenes with a water element to it and scenes of the Gunflint Trail.

If you haven't been there, make sure to put the Gunflint Trail on your Minnesota Bucket List because it's amazing and wild and beautiful and changing.  It's a cliched statement of the obvious but I have to say it: It's alive! What's even more amazing is how some of the oldest rock on the planet can make you feel alive!  Especially from a painters perspective. The scenes are endless. They are vast and they are intimate.  Places where the whisper becomes a bang and then cocoons you in its stillness.  If Tom Thomson and his cronies were painting today I could tell you where to find them: on the Gunflint Trail. Most likely around Larch Creek as there are copious rock outcroppings to summit for panoramic views. I try channel them every time I paint there because while the Gunflint is beautiful it's also rugged and rugged beauty can be hard to harness.  I dedicate this painting to the Group of Seven and crew. To their boot soles and canoe paddles and the paths they blazed for us to the beautiful amongst the wild.