Original Image Size: 28" x 14" (711mm x 356mm)
Limited Edition of 250
Image Size: 28" x 14" (711mm x 356mm)
Print Size: 28-1/2" x 14-1/2" (724mm x 368mm)
Limited Editions include a Certificate of Authenticity
Open Edition
Image Size: 18" x 9" (457mm x 229mm)
Print Size: 18-1/2" x 9-1/2"" (470mm x 241mm)
Small
Image Size: 10" x 5" (254mm x 127mm)
Print Size: 10-1/2" x 5-1/2" (267mm x 140mm)
North Head light is located in Washington State, about 2 miles north of the mouth of the Columbia River and the Cape Disappointment light, on Cape Disappointment. It was built in 1898 to warn ships approaching the Columbia River from the North. The mouth of the Columbia River is known as the Pacific Graveyard and, compounding the danger to ships in the area, is considered to be the third windiest spot in the nation.
Having spent several summers with family in nearby Long Beach as a boy, I have a sense of personal connection to this scene. Maybe because everything seems to have been so much larger then, I wanted to capture a sense of the expansive feeling of the wide horizon that the light looks out upon. Even though the light was activated some eleven years before, the French tall ship Alice went aground in a storm on January 15, 1909, about 15 miles north, near the town of Ocean Park, on the Long Beach peninsula. Remnants of the wreck were still visible at low tide for many years after. The image of it is placed in the clouds, which in turn are painted as viewed from above, to create an ethereal sense of relationship between the past and present.