Description
This artwork was inspired by one of my lifelong dreams: floating the Grand Canyon. I had the opportunity to travel down the Colorado River with a group of about thirty people, spending days rafting through one of the most powerful landscapes on Earth. The trip was physically demanding. Temperatures reached between 110 and 119 degrees, and I do not tolerate intense heat well. Many days I felt close to sunstroke. One of our daily survival rituals on the river was dipping buckets into the cold river and pouring water over our heads to cool off.
During the journey I developed a serious infection in my foot. The guides and doctors were concerned because infections can move quickly up the leg. I took antibiotics and managed to keep the infection from spreading until I returned to Fort Collins, where I later went to the hospital. That experience added a darker dimension to what had been a dream adventure.
The piece reflects both the light and dark sides of that experience. One side of the artwork celebrates the beauty of the canyon and the joy of fulfilling a dream. The darker side contains Halloween imagery, including scorpions and other symbols representing the dangers and struggles that occurred during the trip.
The Grand Canyon journey was also when I first became fascinated with the energy of minerals. Many of the people on the trip were professors, scientists, and highly educated travelers who explained the geology of the canyon each day. Listening to them describe the layers of rock and the different minerals sparked my curiosity. Around the same time, I had watched a documentary about the nuclear accident in Russia and learned how uranium emits powerful energy. That made me wonder: if God created minerals like uranium that release destructive energy, perhaps there are also stones and crystals that release healing energy.
This realization inspired the crystal imagery in the piece. A small crystal tree made from wire appears in the artwork, symbolizing my early exploration of the spiritual and energetic qualities of minerals.
The foundation of the piece began with a photograph taken during the trip. The photograph was enlarged and transferred onto canvas, and then I layered paint, found objects, and sculptural elements over the surface in my signature mixed-media style. If you look closely, you can see images of some of the people who were part of the expedition hidden within the composition. Like many of my works, the piece also contains glow-in-the-dark elements that reveal themselves when the lights go down.
The artwork tells the story of a dream fulfilled, a physical trial, and the beginning of a new curiosity about the hidden energies of the natural world.
