Words from the Artist:
"I've devoted myself to making art, writing about art, and teaching art for more than thirty years. When I retired in 2000, after teaching at the University of Alaska for twenty years, it was to paint full time. I am normally in my studio by 8 every weekday morning, and I work until about 5 every day. I believe that inspiration comes in doing the work, rather than needing to be found before starting.

I have now painted the northern landscape for more than a quarter century, from Hudson Bay in Arctic Canada to East Cape on the Bering Strait in Siberia. I paint mountains, rivers, snow, ice, tundra, and forest, but more than any other image, I paint birch trees. People often ask why I always seem to return to birch trees as subject matter. First, I think they are among the most beautiful things I've ever seen. They're not at all white and black, as most people think of them, but display an amazing range of beautiful colors, textures, and individual forms. I call a lot of my birch tree paintings "birch portraits", because the trees seem to me so individual. As with people, a lot of the history of their lives can be seen in the way they look."

If you would like to see some of Kes' more recent work, check out his blog at http://keslerwoodward.typepad.com