The day, sunny, crystal clear, gave no hint of the impact it was to have on Ed Hill and Lyall Nanson so many years later. Some seven or eight years before it would ever become an artist’s image, the colourful painting “SUMMERTIME DREAM” was surely born on that day in the early 1980’s. Ed Hill was driving towards Vancouver when to his left, just outside of Abbotsford, B.C.; he noticed numerous hot air balloons just lifting from a field. Though Hill kept driving, he turned to look as often as traffic would allow. Even as he was well past the rising balloons Hill persisted in stealing every glimpse he could of the captivating and powerful shapes and colours. At one point he looked into his driver’s side rear view mirror and there was the image. Three of the kaleidoscope spheres were visible in his small circular mirror and in the background – majestic Mount Baker. Those colours, the sharp, crisp lines and the symmetry of the moment gave Hill a feeling that he didn’t recognize at the time. The impact of that crisp imagery hit hard however, and endured through the years.
In the spring of 1991 Ed Hill and Lyall Nanson were talking. Both had collaborated in producing a serigraph to commemorate the departure of the Beachcombers CBC television series from Gibsons in 1990 (Beachcomber Farewell). The two had become friends and often talked of ideas, inspirations and ongoing projects. It was Nanson who said he was hoping to do a painting of hot air balloons and the very words as they were spoken went straight to their mark. The image of that hot clear afternoon many years in the past came back to Hill with clarity and impact. The two artists talked of what Hill had seen. The image of so many yeas ago now caught both artists and, as they had worked with each other before, they agreed to “….just one more project” together.
In April of 1991 both traveled to Mount Baker, Washington on a perfect west coast spring day. They experienced the blinding white snow, the sky deep with an unwavering blue and the clear sharp lines of contrast between rock, ice and deep powder snow. Probably no balloon has ever drifted over those peaks that the two men saw that day but as artists, they felt a privilege in being able to paint the image they could both see so vividly. Those balloons of colour and silent serenity were real to both artists. They wanted their impression on paper. It had to be expressed. Their painting was completed in the spring of 1991. It was as they had imagined it – no – as they had seen it! In effect they had shared with each other, and now with you, their ‘SUMMERTIME DREAM”.