Original painting by Nancy Gorman
Watercolor on Arches 140lb coldpress paper
White frame
11" x 15" painting
18" x 20" outside frame dimensions 
This summer, I have been struck by the height of the spruces. I've painted them many summers, ever since I began painting, and I have looked at them sailing my whole life. But I tend to think of red spruce as the ones it's hard to walk under barefoot because their needles are so sharp and white spruce as the ones that are hard to walk under because of their impenetrable thickets of dead branches, not their height. I've thought of their roots, balancing on bare rock, the wild color of the old man's beard in their branches, the mysterious purple depths under them, the shell mounds that appear when they blow over. But I haven't thought about their height. I painted this from the cockpit of the boat because once again, it was too windy for us to want to leave the boat at anchor and go ashore and paint. It was a good vantage point from which to admire the spruces but I had to clip everything down so it wouldn't blow overboard.