Alpine Meadows Sunset. Acrylic on Panel. 24" x 48" 1998
This image captures a Montana summer evening that my father and I headed up the hill for a sunset inspection of the Angus herd. On the high ridges the view to the North takes in the Highwood Mountains and Square Butte. The deep blue hills are the area where Charlie Russell lived with the Blackfoot tribe and created many of his iconic works. This was my first large landscape painting. I would not return to painting til 2009, after my father's death from cancer, with the Entropy Bale series- they have their own file on the Studio Art page.
Alpine Meadows at Sunset. Acrylic on Canvas Panel. 18" x 24" 1997.
I began this painting while chairing a High School art department in Colorado, and put it aside when I left teaching. My father let me come to his ranch while I figured out what I would do with myself, and I finished it as the snows of September began. It depicts the same evening on the high meadows as the larger panel. Resolving this smaller painting gave me the inspiration for the larger painting, where I investigated a different approach to color relationships laying them side by side rather than layering and blending.