Same photo, New Information

Xenoliths

Take a look at the Xenoliths that are starting to show up in the painting.  What's a xenolith?

Everyone asks that when ever I point them out as we kayak past the immense Tahoe boulders.

Occasionally they sneak their way into my paintings.  And then I sometimes get asked about them by people looking at the painting.

The word xenolith in ancient Greek is a "foreign rock". It is a rock fragment which becomes enveloped in a larger rock during the latter's development and hardening.  In geology, the term xenolith is almost exclusively used to describe inclusions in igneous rock during magma emplacement and eruption.  Xenoliths may be engulfed along the margins of a magma chamber, torn loose from the walls of an erupting lava conduit or explosive diatreme or picked up along the base of a flowing lava on Earth's surface.  At any rate, many of the boulders along the shore at Lake Tahoe are filled with little rocks;   rocks within the rock.


Take a look just below the water line on the left boulder in the painting, and there you see the beginning of a xenolith.  There are others beginning to show up in the middle rock above the water line, where the light begins to turn to shadow.  They are faint, but they are there.

As I push the paint onto and around the canvas they will become more obvious. 
 Keep watching.