This painting was inspired by a chance encounter with the Northern Lights, in Palmer Alaska.  It was March 2025. My husband and I were waiting for our 7 pm flight to Alaska. I brought my Nikon D750 camera to try and capture some pictures of the northern lights. We would be there for 3 days and the prospect for seeing the Aurora Borialis display was high. 
 
A storm rolled into Sea-Tac, complete with lightning, our flight was delayed until 8 pm.  It’s a 3.5 hour flight from Seattle to Anchorage and we were on a tight timeframe as the rental car company at the Anchorage airport closed at 1 am.  
 
We landed  at 12:30 am and waited for our luggage as the minutes ticked by..and waited..and waited…It finally arrived at 12:50am.  We rushed down a very long hallway to the car rental counter.  We made it with 5 minutes to spare. 
 
We loaded the car and then it was an hour long driver to our bed and breakfast. The driver was uneventful until around 1:24 am.  We were 10 minutes from the Bed and breakfast and my husband looked up and said “it’s the northern lights!”  
 
He pulled the car over and we both got our cell phones out and started taking pictures and videos.   It was cold but not freezing so I was able to take quite a few photos, and for once my iphone was taking decent night sky shots.  
 
We had an early morning the next day so we regretfully continued to the bed and breakfast.  I was able to grab a few more pictures from the bed and breakfast parking lot area and the window of our bedroom, including bits of red and yellow which is really rare!  That night was a miracle, as the next 2 nights ended up being too cloudy to see the northern lights.