Leavenworth, WA in Winter Night

In May of 2006 my wife and I spent some time at a condo in Whistler BC, so I brought my paints with me. For a subject of my second landscape, I decided to chose my birth town of Leavenworth, WA.  I had come across a picture that someone had captured that was taken at night with film that drew out the orange colours.  So I decided to use two colours for a sense of colour unity within the picture. I used Cadmium Yellow and Alizarin Crimson, along with Titanium White and Lamp Black...because I wanted a jet black sky.  Originally, except for the snowman, there was no other "person" in the picture.  Because Leavenworth always has lots of tourists from Seattle and the world visiting the Barvarian-style town, one of my friends from the area called the artpiece, "Steven's Pass Closed," because there was no one in site!  Alas, so that I did not break Logan's stereotype of "Der Village," I decided to put a romantic couple in the gazebo enjoying the peacefulness of the town on the quiet winter night.

Two Lonely Friends Meeting Under a Cold Winter Sky

I laid my light blue and gray down all over the canvas in the late spring of 2006, but the canvas got put aside.  When I pulled it back out in February 2007, I worked on the clouds and tree.  I wanted a sense of winter, impending storm with an independent tree. But after the tree was done, I realized, "It is not good that tree be alone," so I put in a friend who travailed across the same lonely hill and who could share the moment.  The cloud-and-sun-contrast begs one to remember that even when the dark clouds seem so ominous, the bright, consistent sun still is very much shining...and we just need to hold onto that Hope and onto others in those times when the storms blow in.