A Song for the River Spirit

Acrylic on Gallery Wrapped Canvas 
24"x48"
 
Beneath the hush of slack tide, the Fortune River becomes a mirror—so still, so precise, it feels like a seam between realms. Here, the trees don’t just reflect... they remember. Their mirrored forms stretch into the cosmos, roots threading stars instead of soil. It is a moment between breaths, where the seen and unseen trade secrets.
 
Light dances on the water—not sunlight exactly, but something older. I see them as angels, or ancestral energies, shimmering to remind us they are there. They move like music, like memory, like prayer. A school of fish drifts through this mirrored sky gliding through the stardust. They are carriers of the ancient intelligence that lives in the deep.   
The beavers, diligent and grounded, harvest from a tree whose heart is crystal—reminding us that deep within all things, there is light waiting to be revealed through sacred work.
Three herons glide toward land, messengers of transition, grace, and self-reflection. They are time travelers, bridging seasons of the soul.
 
And in the center, a woman stands on tide-swept grass, arms wide singing her prayer to the river spirit. Her drumming has called the eagle the spirit of vision, protection, and divine sight. At her side, a fox gazes upward, curious as to what the human is doing. Another looks directly toward us. She’s confronting us, reminding us of the sacredness of this moment and to hold it in reverence. 
 
A canoe rests at the bottom of the scene, suggesting a journey—perhaps already taken, perhaps just beginning. A sky-fox sleeps nearby on a woven blanket: a dreamer holding the ancestral thread. The fire burns quietly by the river’s edge, its smoke lifting into spirit form, a grandmother who is always there. And below it all dandelions, bright and defiant, sprout like golden prayers. Some have burst and their seeds float upward, through every layer of the painting, up into the sky. We humans are the seeds of Gaia with the capacity to bring her wisdom to the cosmos, but we must first understand our true potential and we do this by recognizing the truth of our place as children of this sacred being.  
 
This painting a reminder that the stillest moments often hold the deepest movement.