Blue Ridge Mountains

I completed this painting while living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The painting is from a trip I took to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Many people each year travel here to this spot to watch as the leaves change colors in the fall. While a traveler camps out over the period of a 3 to 4 day weekend they can wake up each morning to see a difference in the colors of the nature around them. The color change is that noticeable.

During the travel to this location we had elk eating in the fields beside my truck and we stopped and stood within feet of the elk. The road offered wondrous cliff side views that took my breath away. Although my wife seemed frightened by my driving so fast and close to the edge I was not afraid unless we came up on some black ice. I learned while living in Germany not to underestimate black ice on the roads in the winter as it forms in the shady parts of the road where the sun does not melt the water drainage turned ice form the night before.

The painting replicates both an impressionistic and a realistic scene as the real thing is not much different from this painting; that is how beautiful this natural mountain range is. Flowing hilltops and sinking valleys where the treetop horizon flows smoothly as though a cloud on the ground. In this scene in fall it is morning and my windows are filled with leftover dew from the night before.

The mountain range is at such a high altitude I am unsure if this is clouds I am seeing amongst the valley or is this fog? I find out later in the day as the fog lightly lifts away and clouds remain amongst the terrain. The morning sun is to my east, my right as I am looking over a cliff at this fabulous site.