“I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room. The curtains of pale blue silk fell like a cataract over the windows. A large green marble basin, which stood on a low pedestal in a corner of my room, was overflowing like a spring, and a stream of clear water was running over the carpet. And where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow.

“My dressing-table was of black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved in foliage. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy. I saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Springing from the bed, my bare feet alighted upon a cool green sward; and I found myself under the boughs of a great tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging lights.

“Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, were discernible along the right bank. ‘This,’ thought I, ‘must surely be the path into Fairy Land”.’

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

“When March blows its horn,
your barns will be filled with hay and corn.”

An image of peace and safety in the midst of turmoil and danger.

This is my digital artwork, not a photograph.

Happy birthday to my twin nieces, Esther and Elodie! This is the sort of scene I'd like to be looking down on - they have so much to explore!

I love mornings with lots of dew on the grass.

This is my digital artwork, not a photograph.

A look below the surface of the river that has been seen in others of my scenes in the cwm.

Cwm Solitude
Welcome to the Cwm
Cwm Waterfall
Window on the Cwm

This is the kind of still water I'd like to rest beside. I got the idea swinging in my hammock and looking at a red maple. For some reason both the red maples in my yard hang down in a “weeping” shape. But I don't have a pond in my yard for them to hang over - that part came from my imagination.

I decided to do a summer version of my Winter Leaves work.

I like to get plenty of use out of settings once I build them, so this render is around the corner to the left of my Cwm Solitude scene. I wanted to create a waterfall in the scene itself - often they're just a flat plane with a waterfall image that placed in the scene, or the waterfall is added later in PhotoShop. But this is an actual 3D waterfall that works from different angles. Eventually I hope to do another picture looking the opposite direction down the stream into the valley.

Sunrise over the Nottely River in western North Carolina.