TOWNSHIP 3 RANGE 8 – Evelyn Dunphy’s fingers are numb, her paints are nearly frozen on her palette and her frigid feet tingle in her muddy boots.

In other words, it’s another perfect day for the watercolor artist.

Dunphy, 66, trudges through the forest with her handmade canvas bundled into her backpack in search of locations to capture the magical moments of Mount Katahdin, Maine’s tallest mountain. In just over two years, she has created close to 100 paintings of the mile-high mountain – all made from Katahdin Lake a couple of miles away.

Her pre-dawn outings to the wilderness often stretch into the evening. At night, she applies the finishing strokes to her pieces under the light of a kerosene lantern in the warmth and comfort of a cabin built on the lake in 1835, and used by artists for decades.

One of five children, Dunphy grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and studied under an artist who was a student of one of the “Group of Seven” Canadian landscape artists that became well known in the 1920s. Her works now sell for nearly $3,000.

She lives in West Bath, Maine, a four-hour drive from the coast to the wilderness. Her outings usually last from three to six days. She used to carry all her art supplies in, now she has them flown in and hikes.

It’s a privilege, she says, to watch the clouds dancing in the morning light along the ridges and valley of Mount Katahdin – the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and a symbol of Maine’s North Woods.

Her paintings are “a response to the beauty and the wilderness” surrounding the mountain and the land near Katahdin Lake, she says.

She works just outside Maine’s Baxter State Park, a vast preserve where the theme is “forever wild.” At night, the only sounds are those of the wind rustling through the leaves, the water trickling through creeks, and owls and coyotes.

“Being in a place where the world’s noises are absent is powerful,” she says.

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