I painted “Rainier Flowers” on gallery wrapped 3/4-inch canvas, the painting continuing around the edges.

This is the base of Mount Rainier in the full riot of summer — Indian paintbrush burning red through the underbrush, purple asters scattered low to the ground like little stars, and the mountain itself holding still and white above it all. The trees up here grow crooked, leaning and twisted sideways, shaped by winters that push hard against them from one direction for months on end. But it’s summer in this painting, and the wind has let go for a while — everything that survived the winter is blooming at once, gold grasses catching the light, the trail curving off toward all that color.

What I wanted to capture was the trees telling the truth of this place even in bloom — they don’t forget the winter, they just carry it in their shape and keep growing anyway. That felt like the real spirit of the mountain to me: not the postcard version, but the evidence of what it takes to grow somewhere this wild, year after year.