In honor of my wife’s birthday back in April, I purchased a painting from our friend Jay Bowen, a local artist and member of the Upper Skagit Tribe.

Virtually all of Jay’s paintings reflect images, stories, and visions that he realizes on canvas, and my wife and I are big fans of his work. There was one in particular that caught my eye back in February…and I immediately thought that it would make a great way to acknowledge my wife’s birthday — just nine days after my own.

Here is the story behind the birthday painting, as related by Jay from a video I shot of him at the time.

I study, I listen, I see. I review my sketches. I take a lot of photographs. What I’m searching for is a glimpse into the other side, where I can see the piece already composed. Everything I do is exactly what I see, so I have to really quickly get the sketch down of the story that was given to me. Afterward I can fill it all in.

This is an interesting piece. It is a metaphor in which there is a canoe journey, and they are on the ocean with the sun setting behind them when all of a sudden everything around them is unfamiliar. The light is not familiar, and they see the spirit helpers around them. Their paddles are no longer in their hands, and the ocean is no longer the same. It is a different color.

Many people have witnessed something like this when they’ve watched the sunset on the ocean — it’s called the “green flash.” It’s a phenomenon that offers a view into another universe. That is emulated in this painting. That world is always around us. The spirit helpers are always around us. Things are not always as they seem to be. For a brief second their paddles are not in their hands, the water is not the same color, the sun is not the same, and there are spirit helpers all around them. Then a second later their paddles are back in their hands and everything looks the same as it was — but that world is always around us.

I see all of this in Jay’s painting, and I love the image of voyagers in momentary awe of another world revealed to them in a “green flash.” But this painting told me another story as well — which is why I have named it, “The Immigrants.” Having now lived in the Skagit Valley for nearly a decade, my wife and I have come to appreciate that its history extends far beyond its pioneer past and the imposition of one culture on another, with all the good and ill that entails.

The people who were already here — Jay’s people — had their own immigration stories, and boats figured prominently in them. The Coastal Salish were a nautical people, as were the Chinook — and the Upper Skagit are “the people of the river” (just as the Swinomish are “the people of the salmon”). With this painting now the first thing you see when you walk through our front door, my wife and I are reminded that we are a part of an immigration story stretching back thousands of years, that Jay’s history is our history as well, and that we all live in a place of fleeting but constant magic. We are blessed to live here, and Jay’s painting is a constant and vivid reminder of this blessing.