As a landscape painter, my most fruitful and educational time painting is while standing out in mother nature, allowing all that she is to enter my psyche and influence what I want to say about her beauty. Since late March, and the beginning of having to limit our exposure to others, being able to get to some of my regular painting locations has become more difficult. In spite of that, one of the wonderfully special things about being an artist, a painter, is the ability to put yourself into places, times and events, that you can't physically be a part of, and create meaningful images, despite not being there. During the time of COVID-19, I've found that I have more time to think about the "why" of paintings that I create and paint pieces about places and ideas about those places. The painting that I've submitted for The Great American Paint In is of one of those places; a quiet little stream in the mountains of North Carolina. "Below The Pool" is where I would like to be right now, maybe painting, maybe casting a fly upstream into the pool to let it drift down towards me, or maybe to just sit and dream. It's a comforting to think about being there right now.