I painted this piece on a hot Arizonan day while sitting on the rim of Horseshoe Bend, looking down hundreds of feet at the shimmering blue water and startling arc of geology below me. Birds dipped and wove below me, lizards scampered over my palettes and looked curiously up at me, and a hummingbird hovered over my sketchbook as the day heated up. I spent 8 hours working on it and and dodging into slivers of shade provided by boulders and cracks in the landscape, and finished it just as the sun set. I walked back to the trailhead in the dark, reflecting on the geologic wonder I’d just experienced, and looking forward to the thermos of cold water waiting for me in my car.

This 8x20” watercolour and pen and ink original comes unframed, and is painted across two pages, which can be taped together and matted as a long piece, or put in two separate frames and hung side by side.