“Prospect Ridge” original watercolor/acrylic painting 14.5″x37″ Sold.
Back to memory lane and the history of my work in the Wrangell-St. Elias region of Alaska. During 1992 I began a painting using research from a trip taken in 1976, where I flew in the mail plane that landed on all the small bush airstrips in what later became the Wrangell-t. Elias National Park. The story of this experience is recorded on my website under Artists Journal, Bush Mail Plane. This painting shows a view of the beginning of the narrow gorge of the Chitistone Canyon looking north from Glacier Creek gravel airstrip, it lies east of the remote settlement of McCarthy and can only be reached by small aircraft. What is unique about these mountains is the location of a contact point where Chitistone limestone meets the Nicolai greenstone, a location for copper ore. The historic Kennicott copper mine is located to the north west beyond this ridge. I included the remains of a wooden wagon I found at Long Lake, and a log cabin from the historic Bonanza gold mine site east of Chisana to blend remnants from the historic gold rush period where this canyon was used as a prospector trail in the early 1900′s.
The painting was completed in 1993 and was selected to be used as a limited edition print exclusively for Anchorage channel 7 KAKM public broadcasting, as a fund raiser. Copies of the prints are all in private collections, it was never for sale in galleries. We had a few of our own to sell but they have been sold out for a long time. To this day people still remind me that I used the wrong name for this ridge, they tell me that it is not named Prospect Ridge, I continue to explain that that is the name I chose for the painting and the print. Funny, isn’t it?
Gail Niebrugge, painter of the Wrangell-St. Elias wilderness
People are funny, aren’t they! Some just ‘don’t get it’!
By the way, McCarthy was my maiden name.
Yep, I guess if you paint realism they expect it to be labeled with an identity like a photograph.