Breaking Light

A shaft of sunlight breaks through a heavy storm and pours onto a green valley, its bridge, mill, and distant castle. Dark peaks frame the bright, living heart of the scene. Bold contrast and vivid greens. You can purchase the original oil painting on canvas, or a high-quality litho HD print. Breaking Light Story This is the far edge of the mountains, where the peaks finally run out and every storm in the high country comes to break against the last ridge before the open sky. Other villages would have fled such a place, but this one learned to live off it instead. The rains that never quite stop keep the river high and the mill wheels turning, and the valley runs greener than any land for a hundred miles, so that in the dry seasons traders climb all this way to buy grain from the people who complain most about the weather.

But it is the light they live for. Every so often the grey pulls apart overhead and warm gold pours down onto the fields, sudden and complete, and the villagers call it the Breaking Light. When it comes, every hand in the valley goes still. Millers leave the wheel, farmers set down their tools, and children are called in from the road, all of them stepping out into the open to lift their faces and give their thanks before the grey closes again. They will tell you it is worth every storm that came before.