From the letter

On a calm and sunny morning on October 12, 2022, an armada of five dories and three supply rafts shoved off from Lee’s Ferry, on the Colorado River, beginning a 17-day river trip that launched me on a grand journey through space and light. Four hours of rowing brought us 16 miles down river. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon, but the cliffs were already casting their shadows across the water. It was time to go ashore and make camp. The place was called ‘Hot Na Na’.

From the letter

Gliding through the Grand Canyon in a dory that is specifically designed to handle the powerful currents and unpredictable rapids of the Grand Canyon was a unique experience for me. Grand Canyon dories are handcrafted with attention to detail for both performance and beauty. In the hands of a skilled oarsman, a dory will be faster and more maneuverable than a raft. It’s the way to go!

From the letter

Well after the break of dawn, fantastical shadows cling to cliffs. The dory silently slips past stone faced guardians of the realm like a shadow bearing souls into the underworld, the dory drifts deeper into the canyon with the current. Two days on the river has me in wonder what two weeks more might possibly be like.

From the letter

On day four, after shoving off from Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado River, I rose at 6:30am to the sound of air blown through a conch that reverberated off of surrounding cliffs like an elk’s mating call, which meant it was time for coffee. Being neither a coffee drinker nor an elk, I lingered to watch the sunrise that was creeping down cliffs and reflecting off of earth-toned striated rock to create a dazzling display of red-oranges and golden yellows in a mist.

From the letter

I’m back onto the ‘Grand Canyon Suite Series’ with many miles of canyon yet to go. This painting will conclude our first side canyon exploration before we jump back into our dory and head into straight into our first serious rapid on the Colorado River.

From the letter

As we continue down river, we go deeper into the rock strata with cliffs rising higher above us. There is less sunlight reaching us with each passing day. Afternoon shadows appear large on the cliffs.

From the letter

Names of places and slot canyons in the Grand Canyon are often obvious but occasionally mysterious names such as ‘To Hajisho’ appear on the river map. Nevertheless, I feel the name is right for this painting at that place and time.

From the letter

Our dory trip put an emphasis on hiking and exploring the tributary canyons of the Grand Canyon because each one is unique. Our second hike is into Saddle Canyon.

From the letter

For those of you who may be looking for some place to escape to for two or three weeks, I highly recommend a float trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It’s out of this world.

The attached painting is of an area along the river named ‘Dinosaur’, however this can be misleading because no dinosaur fossils appear in the canyon area. All the rock formations in the Grand Canyon were formed before the time of the dinosaurs, which is why I am tipping my hat to Hieronymus Bosch and calling it the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’.

From the letter

After five days of drifting, we have come 66 miles down river. It’s our first overcast and rainy day, but that’s not to say that even overcast days in the Grand Canyon aren’t epic. This painting shows the sky at around 12 noon. We are just downstream from where the Little Colorado empties into the Colorado River, which instantly changed our water clarity from clear to muddy due to the enormous volume of sediment brought into the river by the Little Colorado.

We pass through a gateway of dark massive cliffs cast in muted grays beneath a turbulent sky with some hint of a brighter day beyond.

From the letter

The days have started to get noticeably shorter at an increasing rate because we are around one mile down camping in a steep v-shaped canyon where sunlight arrives late and leaves early. Major Powell recorded his observations in this area of the canyon on his first trip through, on August 14, 1869, as follows:

“The gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with crags and angular projections on the walls. Down in these grand gloomy depths we glide, ever listening, ever watching.”

It was similar for us as it was for the Powell Expedition, gloomy depths that are grand.

From the letter

We are continuing to float through the v-shaped canyon, but besides the grand gloominess of it all, which Major Powell reported in 1869, we are also noticing some unique and spectacular rock formations in the canyon walls, which Major Powell does not mention in his report. At this point in their journey, his expedition had lost boats and supplies and the men were on the verge of mutiny. Their gloomy condition may have influenced Major Powell’s reporting to the extent that beautiful features of the canyon were overlooked, such as the mid-afternoon view from 83-mile Rapids that is captured in my attached painting.

From the letter

We are continuing to float through the v-shaped canyon. In his report, Major Powell mentions crags on the canyon walls but does not elaborate on them. I found the crags intriguing and have attached a painting of one of them.

From the letter

I prefer the watercolor medium for landscape paintings because it comes closest to mimicking the process of creation that takes place in what is seen in nature. For example, most of what you see in the attached painting is nature’s use of water to deposit thin layers of color over a substrate similar to a watercolor. However, the difference is that calcium carbonate has been dissolved from limestone by slightly acidic groundwater and deposited in thin layers over 525 million year old rust colored sandstone to create a thin veneer of luminous travertine. This painting pays homage to nature’s landscape creations using water.

From the letter

Among my New Year’s resolutions is to complete my Grand Canyon Series of watercolor paintings. Therefore, I am beginning 2026 with my first offering of the new year, ‘Above Mohawk Creek’. This watercolor features a natural phenomenon I believe none of the explorers in history would consider to qualify as a legitimate discovery and would certainly not want to be remembered by it. Even Homer would undoubtedly have omitted it from the ‘Iliad and the Odyssey’ although it would certainly have been much more believable than the creatures Homer has Ulysses encounter on his voyage. However, as an artist I am not saddled with the burden of an explorer trying to make it into a history book but free to document my journey through life as I see it unfold. Have a look through my eyes,

From the letter

Dark Icelandic winters are not only a time of holiday merriment and the welcoming of the New Year, but also a time when trolls descend from caves in the highlands down to populated areas to indulge in their own kind of merriment, which includes harassing and playing tricks on people. This is because according to Icelandic folklore, trolls flourish in the darkness, but turn to stone in sunlight. For more than two weeks, Iceland has been tilting towards the sun and emerging from the darkness into the light of longer days, and of course, the ultimate antidote against troublesome trolls is the glorious midnight sun.

Can you see the troll rock in the foreground? The head of the troll became a stone when it was exposed to sunlight. An expression of forlorn surprise bears witness to the moment when the troll saw the light.

From the letter

Icelandic trolls are mischievous and can be quite clever, but according to folklore, they are not very smart. In the painting, a female troll is turned to stone when a youngster lured his mother into sunlight as a prank with his false calls for help. The troll boy can be seen crouching in the shadow of a rock on the left. To his surprise, the all seeing eye of the midnight sun, on its circumnavigational path, eventually found him and also turned him to stone.

From the letter

A gaseous malaise would have completely smothered us in toxic gases if we were not careful to approach the volcano from upwind. We landed in Keplavik in the morning and were hiking to the volcano by late afternoon. As it turned out, we were smothered in fresh air in the form of a heavy fog that swept in from the ocean and caught us ascending a ridge about half-way to the volcano. But spirits were high. One of us strummed on a ukulele and sang a song in the fog and howling wind. We hiked back to our vehicles to return a few days later.

From the letter

A receding fog unveils a masterwork in progress. After being repelled by fog on our first attempt, we made it to the volcano on our second attempt and stood in awe before the eruption. Soon after that, the eruption stopped. It would be our last hike to the volcano as a group. I continued to hike to the volcano and made two solo trips up through the valley to ascend the ridge and follow the midnight sun’s rays through fog and rising gases to the birthplace of new earth.

From the letter

Deity like, the volcano’s crater languishes in a postpartum blues of toxic gases while basking in a halo of radiant glory under the midnight sun. The volcano had stopped erupting. My last two hikes were made solo to see what I may have missed while my attention was focused on the spectacle of an eruption. It was on these solo hikes that I saw more clearly to the beauty of stark landscape compositions of light, space, and earth.

From the letter

With the air refracting the midnight sun a gaseous mist rises from the volcano’s crater and swirls about in an effulgence of eruptive and glowing light that spreads and mixes in the wind. It becomes an air painting.

From the letter

After 6,000 years, roused from the depths of slumber on a fiery couch, Gaia takes leave to rest within a toxic veil of hot gases - perhaps for another 6,000 years.

From the letter

Overlooking the crater after the eruption has ceased, a troll dog and his troll master are immortalized in stone as they stare north for eternity into the midnight sun at midnight. At this moment, people are on top enjoying the view.

From the letter

I felt that I made an intimate connection with the Earth when I stepped onto a field of lava that had recently formed a sharkskin crust covering molten rock two feet down. Flowing like blood through an artery, an intense heat pushed up through my clothes where I lay peering down into a fissure at a bright red spot that looked back at me like a wild animal.

From the letter

Fissures are like doors left cracked open just enough to tantalize our curious minds to spy upon our neighbors. The world of Hidden People described in Icelandic folk tales are elves that live within rocks in a parallel world to ours only revealing themselves at will. I dropped a marshmallow into this fissure. It burst into flames and briefly illuminated the underworld of the Hidden People, but no elves chose to reveal themselves to me on that day.

From the letter

Rock Dwellers have been know to speak to people in poetry from deep within the earth as in the 14th century Icelandic saga ‘The Tale of the Rock Dweller’. The saga is mostly a verse that describes a volcanic eruption that is imminent.

From the letter

Just in case you don’t already know, a new volcanic eruption has taken place, in Iceland, northeast of the Fagradalsfjall volcano. The new eruption has been a spectacular display of red molten lava fountains flowing out to quickly cover the surrounding landscape. But, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Volcanologist say it is sleeping, which could be for a few days or a few centuries. What is time to a volcano that lives on a geological time scale? In the meantime, I continue to reflect on and paint volcanic fissures. I hope you are finding them as fascinating as I do.

From the letter

Lava came up from the Earth. The ice cap burst and melted. Water flooded the land. The sky filled with ash, and darkness reigned like the end of time. The Age of Ice had come to an end. Land was born from the elements of creation. This was when the island of Thule was conceived, consecrated, and brought forth by the will of Gaia, to rise from the sea on the crest of a volcano.

-from “Time Frames”, John Hermannsson

From the letter

Although spring is remains a week away for us, it already arrived last month for southern Japan with an army of gardeners descending upon Lake Ikeda in Nakahama, Japan, to plant flowers along its shores.

From the letter

In 1572 Spanish conquistadors arrived with missionaries to lay claim to the Philippines for Spain. Remarkably in Manila, the monks took what was jungle and built the Church of Saint Augustine in 20 years with little funding, mostly unskilled labor and poor access to materials. Nevertheless, the church was completed in 1607 and has survived 9 earthquakes and the Battle of Manila during WWII. I have attached a painting showing its brilliant baroque style interior space featuring a dramatic barrel vaulted nave that leads up to a sanctuary and alter.

The Church of Saint Augustine brought the concept of the existence of a remote divine celestial space that imposed a new social order and requirements on a local people that lived by religions that were mostly nature based. Fast forward 400 years, and that remote divine celestial space is being challenged by roads and wires with their own imposed social order and requirements. To quote John Steinbeck, “Civilization follows the roads and electricity.” I have attached two paintings that reflect upon the course of civilization in Manila.

From the letter

Here are a few digital post cards from Southwest Florida: ‘Sunset on the Caloosahatchie’ (river), Gulf of Mexico from Oat Key, and Estuary Pond on the Imperial River, Bonita Springs, Florida. The first and last paintings were completed onsite, plein air. The second painting was based on my plein air painting of the same subject that someone acquired.

From the letter

Best wishes to everyone for a new year of peace, joy, and love.

From the letter

Did I mention that I was going to venture into portraiture? I decided to jump start the effort with a self portrait.

From the letter

The artist and his portraits in oil are works in progress, together each creates the other for the new year.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

From the letter

This oil portrait launches the new year for me, ‘Loa’, granddaughter age 6.

My best wishes to you for 2024.

Note

A birthday card for Bryan: the Berlin city skyline, where he was living at the time.

From the letter

A watercolor I did during the lull when the passing storm shifted from being a southeasterly to being a southwesterly. In Iceland, southeasterlies have high steady winds while southwesterlies typically result in gusts. The clouds lifted between storms and cast a particularly beautiful light for about 45 minutes.

From the letter

I am expanding my repertoire to include landscape oil paintings. I have been working on bringing my watercolor painting techniques into oil painting to achieve a greater sense of light and transparency with oils to enhance the expression of space. This painting is my most successful attempt at achieving that goal.

Note

The South End Rowing Club on San Francisco Bay. It is where Trish met Ari, the mutual friend who introduced her to Bryan — in other words, the reason Trish and Bryan met. A Christmas present to Bryan and Trish in 2023.

From the letter

Today Iceland is celebrating its 80th year of Independence. Iceland took the liberty of declaring its independence from Denmark on June 17, 1944, while Denmark was occupied by Germany during WWII. At the end of WWI, in 1918, Denmark had ruled Iceland for 700 years and finally gave in to the pressure from the growing independence movement in Iceland. Denmark decided to present to the Icelandic people a referendum to vote for their Independence. The referendum passed, and it was agreed that Iceland would receive its independence in 25 years. Unfortunately, when the year for independence arrived, it was 1943. The world was at war and Denmark was occupied by Germany. Iceland waited a year, then declared independence.

To celebrate the occasion my Icelandic Grandmother, Vigís Steingrímsdóttir, created the attached tapestry (6’x4’)

From the letter

Let’s take a brief respite from politics, and vicariously enjoy a morning walk on the beach with the following painting and verse.

Note

Painted after John and Bryan visited the Monet exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and given to Bryan and Trish in 2026.