"A Delicate Balance" posed an interesting challenge for me from several perspectives. First of all, the challenges of trying to make a painting work that danced between the colors of late autumn and early winter intrigued me. The composition itself seemed to be divided almost perfectly in half with the zig zag of the snowline in the foreground.

I wanted to capture the feeling of distance between the heavy fog in the background and the early morning sun burning through in the middle and foreground. The challenge here was to still create a unity to the painting while trying to capture the subtle changes of atmosphere as the landscape moved back into the distance.

It was a cold, damp morning at the Morton Arboretum, one of my favorite places to paint in the area. I had only a short window to study the atmosphere as the fog began to burn off as the sun started to rise.

It was while I was on the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) trip in Southeast Kentucky in Fall of 2008 that I came across this scene. The entire trail I walked upon seemed to have powerful streams of light that danced across the leaf covered ground.

The trees were so massive and the canopy of leaves seemed endless. What caught my eye here was the way the light was shining through the trees and how the leaves on the ground seemed to capture the light and hold it. I was also drawn to the erosion beneath the trees exposing the root system. The massive rocks that were nestled in next to the trees seemed to almost support them.