Painting in the Wild

As a summer artist in residence, Kathy Hodge 79 PT* is once again heading west (from East Providence) to experience America’s wilderness. This time she’ll visit the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska for a weeklong adventure that involves kayaking, camping, glaciers and – of course – painting.

The US Forest Service has modified its Voices of the Wilderness (VOW) program this year by pairing artists with forest rangers, thus providing them with firsthand experience as stewards of America’s public lands. Hodge will have the opportunity to “kayak calm fjords and camp on glacier-carved shores,” to see with her own eyes “a bear foraging among intertidal mussels or seals hauled out on the ice.” She’ll follow up her Alaskan adventure with a series of talks and gallery exhibitions that help spread the word about the value of land preservation.

Hodge’s Under the Shore (2012, oil on canvas, 30x40") captures the movement of glaciers in Prince William Sound.

In the last decade, Hodge has served as artist in residence in 10 National Parks – from Cape Cod to the Badlands of South Dakota to the Grand Canyon. In 2011, when she kayaked through Prince William Sound with the VOW program, she wrote: “I pull out my watercolor kit and place within arm’s reach my canteen, binoculars, marine radio and bear spray. From the beach I hear the thundering of glaciers calving.”