#249 Madrone #249 Long Sleeve T-Shirt

Outside of the Oroville Dam Visitor Center there was a tall Madrone tree next to the building with rich orange red bark peeling from the trunk. I always thought the Madrone is an attractive native tree. Madrones are native to the western coast of North America, from British Columbia (chiefly Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands) to California.

I'm use to calling it a Madrone but I didn't realize it has other names besides it's scientific name of Arbutus menziesii depending upon location. In the United States, the name "madrone" is used south of the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon and Northern California and the name "madrona" is used north of the Siskiyou Mountains, according to the "Sunset Western Garden Book". The Concow tribe calls the tree dis-tā’-tsi (Konkow language) or kou-wät′-chu. In British Columbia it is simply referred to as arbutus. Its species name was given it in honor of the Scottish naturalist Archibald Menzies, who noted it during George...

My search to find my biological family was the genesis of my journey into the world of art. When I finally found my birth family, at the age of 40, I was plunged into a new and very different family. On one occasion while talking with the father I had never known, I discovered that my great uncle was the renowned watercolorist Dong Kingman. Fatefully discovering a cheap watercolor paint set, and intrigued by my relationship with Kingman, I wondered if I had inherited any of his talent. This lingering question spurred me into trying to paint. My first challenge was deciding what subjects I would paint. As a fan of Van Gogh, and knowing that he painted images from his day to day life: houses, fields, people working, I decided to do the...