The Ghost Forest — Original Watercolor, 14×11

Quake Lake was born from catastrophe. In 1959, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake just outside of West Yellowstone triggered a massive landslide that dammed the Madison River overnight, creating a lake where there had been none. Rising waters swallowed the forest whole.

What remained are the ghost trees — their tops still visible near the shoreline, standing silent and submerged, preserved by the cold water and low-oxygen environment. Scientists believe the wood may one day fossilize, locked in time for millions of years.

In The Ghost Forest, I imagined that future already arrived. The trees are depicted not as dead wood, but as agatized and opalized stone — ancient, luminous, transformed. Jewel-toned facets of teal, violet, and gold catch a golden-hour sky. An osprey tends her nest atop one crystalline trunk while a cormorant perches below, unbothered by the strangeness of a forest turned to gem. The mountains behind glow in the same fractured light — as if the whole landscape is slowly becoming something eternal.

A forest frozen not in death, but in becoming.

Original watercolor painting
14 × 11 inches
Comes matted, unframed