I thought in the next few weeks I'd revisit some of my favorite images that Chuck has created over the years. I'm going to try and do 2-3 a week and chat about them a bit. If I drone on too much just let me know. As most of you probably know, Chuck is the artist & creator of all these images. I simply get to enjoy watching him create them and of course we have them on virtually every wall of our home. On one of my forthcoming chats I'll share a view of a few of our walls. Needless to say, with Chuck's level of creativity & drive to produce beautiful images, we have a somewhat 'Victorian' approach to hanging art in the house (that's code to say that it's EVERYWHERE!). When we moved to North Carolina, we each had a number of requests in terms of what type of house to look for--Chuck wisely put a swimming pool at the top of his list, and I wanted to "live in a gallery". We both got our wishes. But I digress....

Back to revisiting favorite images. The one I've chosen for today is a piece called Mayan Leaf. The image has a second version with a solid dark blue background but the one shown here is traced with leaves to echo the primary image.  It is fundamentally a simple piece with two inspirations. In the late 1980's we took our first (and only) cruise and went from New Orleans, to Key West, to Cozumel and back to the Crescent City. While we were visiting Cozumel, we went to Tulum and visited Mayan ruins sitting on a bluff above the Caribbean Sea. The setting was beautiful, and especially now in the COVID19 era--it is a lasting memory of a beautiful visit and a fun time. While there I recall crawling down and shooting a picture into the dark entrance of one of the step Temples. That picture became one of the inspirations for this image. Chuck used it, along with the second inspiration--a couple of Fall leaves from the 'Rising Sun' Japanese maple (Acer japonicum) in our back yard. Chuck was fascinated by the intricate colors of the leaves and scanned them to save for a later 'art project'. Mayan Leaf became that project. The image from the temple in Tulum is the background for one of the leaves, with the second leaf retaining its original Rising Sun form and beautiful Fall colors. Chuck chose the blue background that I find so balanced and calming. This is truly one of my favorite pieces! We have it printed on archival paper in a relatively large format (20X20), though the image would print much larger if we wanted to move it to canvas. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have since he created it in 2016. You can find it on GeoGalleries for purchase here: https://geogalleries.com/WAIowner/17464/img/265032/ . --Scott