When I was a kid growing up in Central Montana near the Missouri Breaks, on a cattle ranch, a few things were pretty important...drawing pictures, reading books and riding horses. My daylight hours were spent outside riding my horses and exploring. I would spend lots of hours in the evenings drawing horses, people and wildlife with whatever medium I could get my hands on. My mother was an oil painter and illustrator. I decided that I was also, and proved that by always getting into her art supplies and creating “art”. I am sure she was exasperated with me, but always gave encouragement and critique.
My work is representational of the west. It is about COLOR! I focus on landscape and work almost exclusively in dry “chalk” pastel. I tend to “push” color, to illustrate a lot of texture and hopefully, for the viewer, give them work that they can enter into and expose their senses to. I want the viewer to be able to “walk into” that painting, feel the warmth of the sun on a fall day, the cold of the snow on an early morning as the sun rises, smell the grasses and grains, feel the humidity of the hot day along a stream; enter that painting and get lost in it, even for a minute...enjoy it.
Welcome to the Gallery
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Shadows, clouds and atmosphere are expressed in a major part of this work. Aspens are a favorite subject. Those majestic, stark trees just stand out from the rest of the “crowd” and demand to be painted! Our landscape of the west is diverse and interesting and very much a source of inspiration for my work. One may see a road travelled or a path walked or a favorite part of the mountains.
One of my other choices of medium is printing. I love to create landscape images with ink and create monotypes, especially in black and white with subtle accents of color.
My work is about color; about landscape...walk on in and enjoy it!