I got the idea for this piece while hiking at Bear Mountain State Park. It was a crisp and bright day, everything was illuminated. We were a little short on time and couldn’t linger around as long as we wanted to. While hurrying to make the last bus home to Brooklyn I got an idea. I created an imaginary character to mark the way back to this day. She would build cairns through out the woods so that I could one day find my way back to this beautiful day, to this time of discovery and bliss. Before leaving the park, I found the perfect place (seen in the photos below) it had plenty of stones for my girl to mark the way.
This image is inspired by watching a sunset in the mountains. I find it to be the most amazing phenomena of changing colors – not just of the sky and the sun but as well the surrounding landscape, especially a mountain range. I love the moment when the mountains become purple, gray, blue silhouettes in the distance. I also enjoy observing others become entranced while watching the sun go down. I aimed to depict a girl, completely taken by the moment and through this sublime experience, becoming part of the landscape.
Until I created, Day Dream, my landscapes would be void of figures despite me loving the Figure. With this mosaic, I gave myself a challenge to create an environment especially for a character. I set out to create a fairytale world for a girl who wished more than anything to live in the mountains! This reflects of my own dreams while I lived in Brooklyn, New York.
I began with the left panel as a vantage point. I created a fairytale, mountain village which quietly awaited the arrival of its first inhabitant. The central panel was for my character, a young girl to sit among the hills, daydreaming of one day living in a quaint mountain town. And in the last panel to the right of or behind the girl is a door that may lead her to where she wants to go when she awakes from her dreams.