Artwork Description:
Red Barn Eastern Oregon
You are the Cascade peak cloaked in white that rises above Portland’s skyline—my mountain-temple, shining. You are Mt. Hood.
You are sheer spires of tufa and basalt making their jagged thrust into an easterly sky that’s quickened with sun during the day, widened by whorls of stars at night. You are Smith Rock.
You are primordial plants and bones turned to rock, the fossil beds lying near those hills streaked with reds and golds so vivid, only an artist’s palette could attempt to match their hues. You are the Painted Hills.
You are a peak that eons ago emptied itself into the sky, a volcano that left a caldera to fill with rain and snowmelt, making a lake so deep, so clear, so ecstatically blue, it first stuns then feeds my eyes. Crater Lake is a part of who you are.
You are a canyon, a massive river’s way to reach the sea, a way cut so deeply that—when they reach the cliff’s bluff—streams must fall hundreds and hundreds of white-misted feet before joining the ocean-bound flow far below. You are the Columbia River Gorge.
You are the cluster of peaks that make our own Alps, a mountain range bordered by a gleaming serpentine river, an alpine terrain cupping the glimmer of tree-rimmed lakes. You are the Wallowas.
For 363 miles, you are that land’s edge where rivers meet and feed an ocean, a shoreline studded with dune and tide pool, cliff and lighthouse, its entire wave-swept length open to us all. You are our Pacific Coast.
Oregon, my Oregon, you’re a natural—
a seven-wonder, wondrous beauty
Keywords:
Oregon, Bend, Landscape, Green, Trees, Countryside, Original Watercolor, Landscape Watercolor