Artist John Sedgwick watched the light play on rock walls scoured by massive ice age floods of biblical proportions. The coulees, grand and small laced the stark, raw beauty of Washington State’s “channeled scablands.”

Grand Coulee, in fact, had been immortalized by the rambling lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s “Grand Coulee Dam,” and it formed a spectacular valley, guiding the mighty Columbia River on its way to the sea.

John Sedgwick pointed out, “Coulee walls are often sheer columnar basalt, carved in mere days by thundering masses of rampaging water laced with colossal chunks of glacial ice barreling 50 miles an hour towards the sea.

“Palisades Road cuts a fine path up a particularly splendid coulee, a narrow rambling flat bottom canyon where rich emerald carpets of spring alfalfa paint the landscape lime green.

“And then I saw it – a lone tree hard against the burnt orange of water starved grass. Inspiration came fast, a vision formed deep in my creative place.

“I knew immediately where this was going, and it worked marvelously well.”

He had driven up to the right place at the right time of day with the right light waiting to be captured by an artist.

The light was not disappointed.

The artistic work of John Sedgwick can be found under the art section of Caleb and Linda Pirtle.