The Sacred Circle

I finished this one a week ago, but I was so furious at the bad behavior of my blog, I did not want to post until I fixed it or it fixed itself.

The sidebar — what you are supposed to see on the right — was on the left, all scrunched up close without margins. I had modified nothing. The site simply broke, and I had art to do.

Here then, now, is some of that.

This scene was on a rounded upwelling of sparkling white bright granite a thousand feet or so above Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park, California. I had climbed up the river canyon behind and then, after reaching the next rail up, came back down and over this ridge. I was not using trails at all. Most people stick to trails.

As a result, they never see scenes like this, with an eagle’s nest in that far tree and a circle of stones dropped by the glacier before last because they are so high up. Eerie Aerie might have been another name, and better. But too late.

Look.

There is a golden eagle in her nest. I did not see her mate. I happened to catch her and the nest without seeing either as a I panned across this scene in a video. I did this painting from a screen grab of that video. (I do not need high resolution photos to make high resolution paintings.)

Notice how the boulders are all different. They are all from different places. They have different compositions, and they have different kinds of wear. For scale, that one in the back was about eight feet tall, and the one in the front? I re-imagined it a bit, making it crystalline for the fun of a bit of visionary impressionism.