‘Baxter Peak to Knife Edge’, by Alison C. Dibble, is an original fine art oil painting of Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain. It is oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches, painted in 2017.

I painted it outdoors, at Millinocket Lake, in the company of friends. This plein air painting was finished in a single session. One challenge was to capture that misty atmosphere at the lower slope, to give the illusion of distance on a flat surface. Another was to hold back from wanting to paint the details of the distant forest, where I have hiked and conducted botanical work some years ago. I recall how many piles of bear scat we found while hiking in to a vegetation monitoring plot out in the wilderness, and how I happened upon an exciting moss, Goblin Gold, beneath an overhanging rock up on the hillside. That’s the kind of thing I think about when I’m painting!