Evening Song, Fisherman Bay

Painted en plein air from the Weeks' Wetlands Park at Fisherman Bay, Lopez Island with a very strong late afternoon light casting a beautiful warm glow across the bunch grasses & sedge amidst small areas of water at high tide. The colors were simply on fire with the strong backlight against very deep distant violet/greens from the trees around the bay. I had found the perfect winter light to paint!

The very minute I put the last stroke of pastel on this painting, my cell phone buzzed. I normally do not answer it, but was done with the painting and saw it was a Lopez Island phone number.

It was Karen Fisher, Lopez Island author calling, but not with good news. She told me her father, Don Christensen, had just passed suddenly & unexpectedly the day before and there would be a group gathering in Lopez Village tomorrow.

Don and his wife, Mary came to Croatia for my painting trip in 2018 with 12 other artists. Both are fantastic artists who learned plein air techniques and added so much panache to our traveling group of painters. Both continued their artistic journey and participate in our Lopez Island life drawing group,

I can think of no better way to honor Don's life, than to gift this painting to Mary and Karen.