News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Crater Lake study.photo provided
Dan Rickards has been capturing the beauty and majesty of America's National Parks in a series of oil paintings for several years now. Just last month, his affinity for these gems of the natural world landed him a two-week residency at Crater Lake National Park, where he sketched, journaled, painted - and taught others to slow down and truly experience the wonders of Oregon's only national park.
The results of that endeavor will be on display in the artist's retrospective show at Clearwater Gallery on Monday, October 24, from 4 to 6 p.m. The event will also mark the unveiling of the painting "Sentinels of the Great Basin." A special selection of wine will also be on offer.
As artist-in-residence at Crater Lake, Rickards made it his mission to get people out of their screens and into the deeper flow of nature. He noted that people more and more tend to treat excursions into the wild as opportunities for selfies and other smart-phone photos that they then rush to post on Facebook or Instagram.
He saw his mission as helping people truly connect, "to take more time at the park ... so you're remembering what it felt like to be there, not just what it looked like... If you only believe the photos on your phone, there's something you're going to miss."
Rickards encouraged others to sit and sketch and to write and sketch in journals - and he did the same. He did studies and sketches, and experimented with color. All of that will be on display in the October 24 show.
"There'll be plus [or] minus 10 pieces that will represent my stay there," he said.
The pieces will be available for purchase.
Four people who stayed at the park with Rickards will also have pieces in the show.
The unveiling will be of a major piece in Rickards' series of national park paintings, this one featuring Great Basin National Park - which is especially noted for clear, dark skies.
"I actually painted it as a night scene with the Milky Way galaxy," he told The Nugget.
The artist illuminated the painting with black-light paint.
"For me, that's a pretty big stretch," he said. "We'll see how that goes."
Clearwater Gallery is located at 303 W. Hood Ave. For more information, call 541-549-4994 or visit www.danrickards.com.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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