Mount Rainier’s iconic image is the very soul of Seattle. Its majesty and scale are beyond Seattle’s impressive man-made structures. The great Japanese woodblock master Hokusai had created “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.” Because of him, I was inspired to learn the wood block technique of print making in order to depict the Rainier landscapes in the same medium. These thirty six views of Mount Rainier now stand as the American bookends to the Asian collection of the 1850s and indeed have been displayed side by side.
When I lived in Seattle the mountain snuck up on me as I followed my daily routine. I saw it in my rearview mirror and caught glimpses of it as I walked to the grocery store. It tantalizing me from the corner of my eye until one day I stopped running around and really began to look at the mountain. I fell in love it and for 5 years I traveled all over the state of Washington painting Mount Rainier from every imaginable setting. I first painted the mountain on site; in watercolor but the time commitment to caring and printing in the wood block technique added a richness and depth to the works that honors the mountain. I made the same number of views of Mount Rainier as Hokusai made of Fuji. Each print is only 17 inches by 15 inches but seen together they dominate a room in the way that the mountain dominated my imagination while I lived in its shadow. I have had all 36 views installed in several public venues in the Seattle area.
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