The Gallery: Landscape 1
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Beth E Peterson
Text and Artwork:
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Fall Birch Oil 9" x 12" I love birch trees. This somehow seems appropriate, since "Beth" in early Teutonic languages actually meant 'birch'. :-) *esoteria for the day*...And yes, my name is Beth...not Elisabeth nor Bethany or any of the other similar names. Anyway, this particular birch tree I met while roaming some forest land in Maine. It was tinted so delicately with peach and lilac tones, I just had to paint it! This painting was one of the very first attempts I ever made at using oils, and I still have it hanging in my living room... Hmmm....I wonder if that means anything.... 
Alaskan Spring Watercolor 18" x 24" I love the wilderness and have been privileged to be able to visit and explore many great wilderness areas throughout the US. One place I have not been, however, is Alaska...This painting is drawn off of many visual images, impressions and information I have gathered over the years concerning the mountains and tundra of that land. Sweeping vistas and soaring peaks, a spring rush of low-to-the-ground flowers and the calm rest of a lone caribou...My vision of an Alaskan spring. One of these years, I'm gonna get there, :-) 
Castle Oil 24" x 36" I absolutely am fascinated by ruins. All sorts of ruins...Angor Wat? Love it!! Want to go there! Mesa Verde? Oo! Oo! I wanna go again!! The Eilean Donan castle? Oh! I would love to see it in person! Perhaps it is because ruins leave so much for the imagination to fill...You are given the barest template to fill with colors and scents, the vision of the people in the past as they moved through their lives and culture. And then, there is the mystery...imagination knows its own limits, which leaves you, the imaginer, knowing that a mystery will always remain. That there will always be more to know and imagine, simply because it cannot all be known. Some people, I know, think that ruins are morbid. That they bring too much consciousness of decay and of our limited time here on this planet. To me, I see them as something else... to me, they say that even if what we leave behind weathers and crumbles, simply that we have left something behind gives those who come after us questions to ponder, thoughts to explore, vistas to imagine.  Colorado Hillside Watercolor 3.5" x 6.5" This miniature is one of my favorites. I lived out in Colorado for a time after getting my BFA. This hillside faced the area in which I lived, and the winter colors (when the snow had melted during a chinook) were just lovely. This was also one of the first watercolors in which I began allowing areas to dry before moving on to the next area...Dad mainly works wet into damp, and so had I until then. I was quite pleased with these results. 
Fall Contrast Photograph 8" x 10" While walking one afternoon, I had caught sight of this maple tree. Gorgeous red rims on the leaves, which was lovely, but not unusual. But then I saw that the stems themselves had also turned, and were now blood red. The combination was too enticing...I went home, retrieved my camera, and took several shots. One of the things I like about this photo is the juxtaposition of the summer green surrounded by and slowly becoming the red of autumn.... Change is inherent, and yet it often moves in patterns that we can see, with one set of eyes or another. We only need to look, and accept what we see.
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