M Ryding National Park Series

National Park Series

These images are my impressions of the National Parks I have visited. I usually I begin with a watercolor or colored pencil sketch done at the spot. On site I also take photographs and note initial impressions & my overall sense of the place. Each site has its own essence, and I try to interpret that in color and texture. Getting the feeling of a place involves much more than a factual representation. Using the sketch as the base or as a guide, and also photographs, I work in either encaustic or mixed media and build up each image in layers. I often include handmade papers, fossil and gravestone rubbings, tea bags, maps, origami paper, bits of park brochures, anything that will give the piece the textures and colors of the place in that moment.

"Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees." John Muir

"We must handle the woods, the water, the grasses so that we will hand them to our children and our children's children in better and not worse shape than we got them." President Theodore Roosevelt, 1903