Last fall, a corporate client reached out to see if I still had any large paintings from my Hydropower series. They collected a piece back in 2021 and were looking to acquire art for a new building in the Atlanta area. In our conversations, I suggested that I make a painting of a hydroelectric dam in Georgia - something created just for them, but painted in the style of that series.
They loved the idea, so I did a site visit at Carters Dam (which also happens to be the highest earthwork structure east of the Mississippi River at 445 feet) and created the following three sketches:
As awesome as this dam is, it is not a TVA owned or operated facility, so it was not included in my book Dangerous Waters: A Photo Essay on the Tennessee Valley Authority, but it is a perfect subject for Hydropower painting.
The client chose Option 3. Here is the finished painting in my studio:
Carters Dam, oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2026. Private Collection.
I changed the color palette some (softened the foreground into a yellow-green and made the sky more saturated and flat), but it is otherwise as I sketched it out.
It was fun to visit this painting approach again, and I always welcome a visit to a hydroelectric dam.
