09/11/2026
I have stood at Great Falls more times than I can count, and the river has never once looked the same way twice. The photograph above catches it beautifully—the granite, the Potomac shouldering through the gorge, the mist lifting into a soft morning sky. Every detail is true. And yet, something was missing: The color.
The water runs blue and turquoise and green all at once; the rock warms to gold and rust in the light; the far hills go lavender, and the mist turns nearly luminous where the sun finds it. So I never set out to copy the photograph. I set out to paint what my mind sees--the part a lens leaves out.
That is the heart of Reflectionism. We don't take in the world the way a camera does; we bring light and motion and feeling and ourselves to all of it. My palette knife lets me press those impressions further—hard stone against restless water, reflected light, the raw force of a river carving its way through rock.
This piece won't travel with me to Dallas tomorrow. It is bound for the Loudoun Museum's charity auction on September 22, where it will find a new owner while helping preserve the history of the county that raised me.
Which feels exactly right. Great Falls is a landscape I know by heart; Dallas is the adventure ahead. And somewhere between the two is what I hope every canvas reflects—not simply how a scene looked, but how it feels to live within it.
