Entering Yellowstone Painting

During a solo cross-country road trip where I camped in national parks, I took the road from Cody, WY, to the eastern entrance of Yellowstone. As I drove into the park near Yellowstone Lake, I noticed a copse of trees that had been burned, a practice quite common for the health of the ecological system there. It was eerie, almost ghostly, but intriguingly and captivatingly beautiful. The poignant and tender metaphor of death and rebirth was not lost on me. Perhaps even more powerful was a particular group of trees that cradled a fallen one. It leaned into them, and they seemed to hold it, stoically, with grace. The image--and its message of vulnerability and strength--stayed with me, and I knew I needed to paint the way it affected me emotionally, from memory.