I’m working on an essay right now and it ties together thoughts about my current painting practice, quotations by Charles Hawthorn and Barry Lopez, my love of play, and a recent magical visit to Grafton Notch State Park’s Screw Auger Falls. This painting, a memory from that visit, contains all my thoughts expressed in pigment. It is a teaser for the words, which will publish next week. In the meantime, how is the geographic term waterfall defined in Barry Lopez’s Home Ground, a dictionary for the American landscape?

At certain points in the course of many rivers, water descends vertically; these waterfalls may come where the river leaves a plateau, where it crosses bands of resistant rock, or where it encounters a fault scarp. On rivers, waterfalls are often wider than they are tall; in mountain streams, they tend to be higher than they are wide. In almost every case the sound and sight of glassy water turning into froth and fury is an irresistible lure to humans. Niagara Falls, the continent’s highest-volume cataract, was one of the first headquarters of the sublime for American painters, writers, and other travelers. Waterfalls are in constant motion in more ways than one — they migrate slowly upstream as the lip erodes and the wall is undercut in the plunge pool at the base.

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Every Tuesday The Maine will post a new painting by Jessica Ives. These small works, all 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panels, will be concurrently listed for auction on dailypaintworks.com, a fantastic platform designed by artists, for artists. View the auction for this painting here, or simply click on the image above.

Tuesday 207 paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Visit the growing gallery of Tuesday 207 paintings here.

Jessica is the editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.