Hidden Places Along the Water | Laurel River Lake and Daniel Boone National Forest
Artist's Notes · Laurel River Lake
The places I love most at Laurel River Lake are often the ones that close in around the boat: a rain-darkened run-in, sandstone disappearing beneath green water, rhododendron leaning over a bank, or the last light reaching the edge of an island.
The open water is beautiful, but Laurel changes when you move closer to the shoreline. Trees fill the reflection. Rock shelves appear above and below the surface. A cove turns, the open lake disappears behind you, and suddenly the water seems to take its color from everything growing around it.
Those are the places I keep photographing, painting, and coming back to. The first five became Hidden Places—artwork made from the water, stone, forest, rain, and evening light I know around Laurel River Lake and Daniel Boone National Forest.
Explore the complete Laurel River Lake art storyCloser to the bank
What makes a place feel hidden
A hidden place at Laurel does not have to be far away. Sometimes it begins only a few yards from open water, where the woods close around a creek mouth or a sandstone shelf makes its own little pocket along the bank.
From water level, you do not see everything at once. Sun catches one plane of sandstone while the rock beneath it stays violet-gray. Clear water shifts from turquoise over a shallow shelf to green-black beneath the trees. Rhododendron and mountain laurel push out over the bank, and their leaves repeat across the reflection.
Up close, the shoreline stops being scenery behind the lake. The rock, branches, moving water, submerged stone, and whatever waits around the bend become the whole place.
The waterline is a place of its own
In Rocks at Water's Edge, the sandstone takes up almost as much of the view as the water. Dark horizontal layers break open into cream, ochre, blue-gray, and little flashes of pink where the light reaches them.
The turquoise shallows make the stone beneath the surface easier to see, while the deeper green at the left leads back toward the forest. This is the kind of place at Laurel that makes me want to idle the boat and keep looking. The color changes from rock to water to shade, sometimes within only a few feet.
Rhododendron closes around the water
Where the Rhododendron Holds moves into a smaller forest pool. Evergreen leaves reach in from both sides, with only a narrow run of water and cream-gray stone still visible at the back.
The surface carries several greens at once: deep emerald beneath the rhododendron, yellow-green where sunlight reaches the water, and blue-violet along the shaded edges.
This is one of the things I love about Laurel. A place can feel completely enclosed even though open lake is only a short distance away. Here, the rhododendron makes the little pool feel tucked into the forest, with the water continuing somewhere beyond what you can see.
See native Appalachian plants in placeFrom the field record
Laurel can open wide one minute and almost disappear under the trees the next
I photograph both because I love both versions of Laurel. One photograph keeps the evening horizon, moving clouds, and a low path of gold across open water. Another follows rhododendron into a small green pool until the forest fills almost the entire frame.
The photographs give me something exact to come back to: the shape of the rock, where the light touched the water, how the leaves overlapped, and the real greens and blues that were there.
When I turn those photographs into artwork, I can stay rooted in the actual place while giving more attention to whatever made me stop and look in the first place—the little opening beneath the leaves, a bright edge of sandstone, or a reflection carrying the last light farther across the water.
Sometimes one bright edge is enough
Sun on the Island Edge opens the view again. Most of the wooded point stays in green shadow until the sun reaches the exposed sandstone and turns its broken planes cream, gold, and warm pink.
The reflection carries that strip of light into the water while the distant bank remains blue and quiet.
I love that Laurel does this in the evening. The sun does not have to light the whole shoreline. Sometimes it catches one piece of sandstone, and suddenly the shape of the entire point becomes visible.
Rain gives the forest another way into the lake
In Where the Rain Runs In, water crosses the sandstone in several small drops before reaching the pool below. The moving white water is brightest at the center, surrounded by brown-orange rock, green-black shade, and violet marks beneath the ledges.
The foreground stays clear enough to see warm stone beneath the water. That clear water is one of the things I love about Laurel. The bank does not simply stop where the lake begins. You can watch the sandstone continue beneath the surface while rainwater comes down over it from above.
For a few feet, rock, forest, rain, and lake all seem to occupy the same place.
See the ready-to-hang Canvas printEvening reaches the water through the trees
In Evening Along Quiet Banks, the sun has dropped behind the shoreline. Light comes through the trees in broken pieces, catching leaves, the top of a sandstone shelf, and a long moving reflection below.
I was never interested in turning this into a broad sunset scene. What I loved was the way the last light found the bank.
The layered sandstone, forest growing almost to the water, and deep blue-green below it are unmistakably Laurel to me. Evening changes their color for a little while, but the shoreline remains the reason I stopped to look.
See the ready-to-hang Canvas printThe collection now
Hidden Places has kept growing
The first five artworks began the idea, but I kept finding more places I wanted to remember.
Shaded coves, creek mouths, reflections beneath overhanging trees, wildlife appearing at the bank, rain moving down rock, and the changing edge between forest and water have all found their way into the collection since then.
I don't think Laurel really runs out of subjects. The same bank can become a different place with rain, lower water, evening light, a new season, or something alive appearing where I did not expect it.
Where the Rain Runs In and Evening Along Quiet Banks remain available as gallery-wrapped Canvas prints.
Where the Rain Runs In
Layered sandstone, white moving water, and a clear green pool beneath forest shade.
Shop the Canvas print
Evening Along Quiet Banks
Wooded shoreline, layered rock, and the last green-gold light moving across Laurel River Lake.
Shop the Canvas printKeep looking
Laurel continues beyond the bend
I keep coming back to Laurel in different ways: through the artwork, through the photographs I make from the boat and shore, and through the colors I find in its water, sandstone, plants, fungi, and wildlife.
They are all ways of looking more closely at the same lake.
