LOCALadk
Special Places,
Special Experiences
Adirondack stories in water colors
By Tom Dwyer
The orange belly of the native brook trout flashes briefly in the cold,
whiskey-colored waters of the Adirondack's St. Regis Canoe Area. In
that moment, everything Adirondack comes alive. Bob Ripley carefully
strips-in his line. While one hand holds the fly rod high overhead, the
other retrieves a camera from his vest pocket, and he photographs
the brookie while it's still on the line.
The brookie will be released, like so many of its brothers. Whether or
not it will be 'captured' and live on in one of his paintings, even Bob
doesn't know yet as he carefully tucks his camera away. A special fish.
A special experience. A special place. Its chances seem pretty good.
Bob is a watercolorist; he takes photos of his Adirondack experiences
and uses them for inspiration to create his beautiful watercolor
paintings. Bob did eventually create a painting based on that little
brookie he'd caught and captured on film. It's called Vermiculations,
and View, the art center in Old Forge, selected it to be a 2012 National
Exhibition of American Watercolors poster.
Bob lives two hours outside the Blue Line, in rural Marietta, N.Y. He
retreats to these mountains to enjoy and experience the Adirondacks.
He's never home long from the wilderness park dotted with its small
mountain towns before, "I begin to feel their pull," he says.
