Mountains Declare His Glory

After completing my recent Plein Air study of Yosemite Valley, the mountains’ majesty refused to leave me. Even before I returned home, I had a powerful sense that I hadn’t completed my mission; that I’d left something undone. A powerful insight struck me as I carried the canvas to my car: these mountains are nothing less than an image of God’s grace. So returning to my studio, I used my Yosemite Valley study as a foundation for a major studio composition, The Mountains Declare His Glory.

I began to imagine how it might feel to live in perfect harmony with such grandeur, to be literally a part of the valley. When my family wandered through the national park visitor center, I discovered a key to my fantasy – a recreation of a Miwok Indiana Village, complete with wigwams woven of redwood bark. Here was an unobtrusive human presence, utterly at home amidst the splendors of God’s creation.

When I retured to my studio, I began work on The Mountains Declare His Glory, a poetic expression of what I felt at that transforming moment of inspiration when I entered an immortal scene and made it my own. Because I felt that the valley was, in a sense, a projection screen on which the drama of God’s sunset is heightened, I intensified the lavish colors in my painting. To look on this valley is truly to glimpse the face of God. As a final touch, I even added a Miwok Indian Camp along the river as an affirmation that man has his place, even in a setting touched by God’s glory.