Katy Grant Hanson, Camp Sherman artist

If you were a fifth-generation Oregonian whose great-great-grandfather landed at Lake Disappointment on the Oregon coast, you might feel compelled to walk in Lewis and Clark's footsteps and create a painted pictorial of the land they saw on their journey.

That's the story of Katy Grant Hanson.

She grew up in the Portland area, a perfect backdrop for the knowledge that fills her book, "A Painter's View - Lewis and Clark in Western Oregon and Washington."

Of the 70 paintings in her book published in 2005, most were painted between 2001 and 2004. It was fun, Hanson said, to travel in Lewis and Clark's footsteps and enjoy the trips, guided tours and time outdoors with her husband.

She even attended Lewis & Clark College for a year but then quit when she realized all she wanted to do was marry her husband Carl.

Painting the scenes as they appear today, Hanson points out that the Great Falls of the Columbia of 200 years ago are now gone since the building of The Dalles Dam. Fishing, too, has changed since the construction of the dam. Not all changes to the landmasses have been man made. Several have been the result of erosion, landslides and volcanoes. With paintings such as "Where the Great Shute is No More," we are reminded of a yesterday we can never hope to see again.

Quotes from Lewis and Clark's journals accompany the paintings, along with Hanson's added details about their journey. Lewis and Clark traveled the trails once on their initial discovery, traveling west in the fall of 1805 and again returning east in the spring of 1806. Their comments reveal details about the landscape at two very different times of year.

Hanson provides us a mapped route so we, too, can follow in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, experiencing the struggle and thrill of Sacagawea as reported by Clark in the winter in 1806 climbing 1,000 to 1,200 feet straight up the mountain with her baby so she could see the "Ocian" and the big fish.

Katy Grant Hanson is not only an artist on canvas; she also creates handblown glass with her husband Carl. Having just celebrated their 50-year anniversary on April 20, they started working with glass so they would have art projects in common. Hanson even has thoughts of turning her paintings into glass. It's a two- or three-layer process, Hanson explained, and firing can take over 16 hours.

She would like to do an instructional art book and a book on other areas of her artwork. Hanson creates some of her paintings from photographs but feels her best works are those she has painted at the site. They have more feeling, and she can better portray movement when she is actually there while painting.

Hanson is a member of Plein-Air Painters of Oregon (P.A.P.O.), a group of artists who visit sites and, as the name suggests, paint outdoors.

Look for Hanson and her husband Carl as they walk the many trails around Camp Sherman. Her book can be found at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters.