Deliverance - Glass Print

Original Mixed-Media Resin Painting | McKenzie River, Oregon

There are places in nature where the landscape reveals itself in unexpected ways - sometimes through beauty, sometimes through loss.

Deliverance was inspired by a stretch of the McKenzie River landscape after wildfires moved through the area, taking with them much of the forest that had once covered the slopes. For years, the hillsides had appeared soft and gently rolling beneath their dense covering of trees. When the trees were gone, the underlying landscape was suddenly exposed: immense, rocky inclines rising dramatically above the river.

What initially felt like devastation also revealed another kind of beauty. The newly exposed mountainsides felt majestic, powerful, and elemental - a reminder that the landscape beneath the forest had always been there, quietly shaping the character of the river valley. The experience became a meditation on what is revealed when something familiar disappears.

In the painting, towering trees frame the newly visible slopes, while the McKenzie River moves quietly across the foreground. The contrast between the dark vertical trunks, luminous mountainside, and deep blue-green water creates a sense of both permanence and transformation.

For me, Deliverance is ultimately about release, revelation and renewal. It is about seeing a familiar place differently after change has stripped away what once defined it, and discovering that beneath the loss is another kind of beauty waiting to be seen.

The title Deliverance refers to that emotional sense of release and revelation

Layers of translucent paint, texture, and resin create atmospheric depth throughout the forest and mountains, while the water is built in luminous blue-green layers that suggest movement, reflection, and the passage of time. The resin surface adds dimensionality, allowing light to move across the work and reveal details within its layered landscape.

A meditation on fire, transformation, resilience, and the enduring majesty of the Oregon landscape, Deliveranceinvites the viewer to pause and consider what can emerge when a familiar landscape, and perhaps our own perspective, is changed forever.