Black and Schoodic from the Barrens

Oil on Canvas
5" x 7"
unframed

This is the study for a larger painting. There is a place, far up above Little Tunk Lake, where across the blueberry barrens, Schoodic and Black Mountains rise up. In the hollow below the mountains sit Little and Big Tunk lakes.
Little Tunk is the lake I visited before I was born, and continue to swim in even now.
My mother was a doctor, in the days when doctors made house calls.
"Big Chief," the Native American man who lived down at Big Chief Camps at Little Tunk in the 1950s was sadly dying of cancer. I know no details, other than my mother Eva Reich went there on a house call in the evening of April 4th, 1960, as she was caring for him toward the end of his life. When she came home, she went into labor, and I was born at 6 in the morning. I don't know details that I wish I knew; like who became his doctor then, and did he get the care he needed while my mother recovered? But I do know that Little Tunk Lake is a part of me- and I am sure that is true for many others who know and love the lake.