After my painting class was shut down for the pandemic last March, I tried to continue painting but couldn't keep it up. Many people took advantage of the shutdown to do creative stuff that they didn't have time for before, but it didn't work that way for me. I had plenty of free time, but I just got lazier. Finally, I decided a couple of weeks ago that it was time to push myself to get started again. I told myself that it didn't matter what I painted, or whether it would be any good, I just needed to do it.
I started with a scene from our trip to British Columbia in September 2019. We had just arrived on Salt Spring Island and got settled in a nice little cottage. It was a short distance to Ruckle Provincial Park, so we went there hoping to catch the sunset. At the park entrance, there was this view of a farm which inspired this painting.
Next, I tried a scene from the John Muir Trail in 2001. Evolution Lake is a very spectacular place near the mid-point of the trail. We spent the night camped there, and as we started hiking again the next morning, I took the photo that I used to make this painting.
Then I returned to Canada. A short time after seeing the farm scene in the first painting above, we walked out to the shore and caught the last of the sunset in this scene. We have some great memories of that trip, and now that travel is limited, we just have to make the best of those memories.
