Bill Phillips’ new painting Denali Summer
features two celebrated icons of the far North: one natural, one
man-made. The forbidding and beautiful Alaskan wilds provide the
backdrop for the legendary workhorse of the Alaskan bush: a De
Havilland Beaver float plane. As the plane roars over the summer
tundra, the icy river below rushes and tumbles its contents of glacial
silt. On the distant horizon, America’s highest peak dominates the
horizon. (Mount McKinley is also known as Denali, or “The High One,” in
the language of the local people.) Mount McKinley’s scale is so massive
that the mountain actually creates its own weather, and today its peak
sparkles in the brilliant sunlight of one of the few cloudless days of
the year.