Liquid Amber

There is an unforgettable window of time in North Idaho when the native cottonwood trees lining the banks of Sand Creek begin their autumn transition. Liquid Amber is a 30x30 contemporary landscape painting that captures that precise, fiery ignition of seasonal change. As summer fades, the creek's edge becomes a luminous wall of amber, bronze, and rich gold, reflecting a molten, glowing warmth directly into the cool mountain waters below. 

To translate the grand scale and raw, tactile presence of the Sandpoint wilderness, I sculpted the canvas entirely with a heavy oil impasto technique using custom steel palette knives. Rather than blending the paint smoothly, I layered thick, structural columns of oil to give form to the dense thicket of changing trees. These raised knife ridges catch the actual ambient light of a room, creating a shifting web of microscopic highlights and shadows that mimics a living forest caught in mid-transformation. It stands as the core visual anchor of my studio's philosophy—finding the quiet resilience and moving, vibrant light beneath the surface of familiar local landscapes.