This painting celebrates renewal in the White Mountains of Arizona on the 10th anniversary of our state’s largest wildfire, the Wallow Fire. While much of the Grand Canyon State is hot and void of botanical color in the summer, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in northeastern Arizona is alive with color. And while White is a great description for this region in the winter, in August, the warm greens of treeless, velvet valleys collide with the cool greens of thick pine-scented forests, from 3,500 to 11,500 feet in elevation. I find endless inspiration here in the woods, senacas*, and sky.

*Artist’s note: The words senaca is not found in the dictionary- it is from the Zane Grey novel about the region:

“Dale pursued a zigzag course over ridges to escape the hardest climbing, but the “senacas”—those parklike meadows so named by Mexican sheep-herders—were as round and level as if they had been made by man in beautiful contrast to the dark-green, rough, and rugged ridges.”