Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Peter Yegen


Peter Yegen
acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas
18" x 24"
Available for purchase at Revolution Gallery, Issaquah, WA


Peter Yegen Jr. farmhouses & barns, with the YP brand, are a familiar fixture for any Billings resident. Yegen started an insurance & real estate company back in 1919 and drove his company by the bare-bones motto, "We Pay For Ashes and Sell Dirt Cheap." YP barns from every decade of the 20th century are strewn throughout the Billings area; while a lot of them have been torn down or fallen into disrepair, many of them, like the lonesome one in this painting, remain standing despite the onslaught of time.


And saw rain falling, in the distance
more slowly,
The road clear from her past the window-
glass -
Of the world, weather-swept, with which
one shares the century.
-George Oppen, from the Discrete Series

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Moonlight Stragglers - SOLD


Moonlight Stragglers
acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"
SOLD

This is another more impressionistic painting with rough texture and a surreal quality to the composition. People keep telling me that I need to paint more bison, which I find to be such impressively gorgeous creatures, so you can expect to see more cropping up in the future! :)

Montana has been pulling on my heart-strings lately. Can you tell? I just recently finished an amazing anthology called "Montana Women Writers" and will share more about that in the next few days. I also saw Storyhill, a folk-rock duo from Montana, a few days ago - I've seen them live so many times and just can't get enough of their beautiful music. My homesickness probably stems from all that Montana-goodness, as well as the fact that it's been so cloudy and rainy here in Washington. I find myself missing my prairies.


What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
-Blackfoot saying


Friday, April 23, 2010

Nourishment


Nourishment
acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas
16" x 20"
Available for purchase at Revolution Gallery, Issaquah, WA


Here's one that's completely different. I'm not sure if it's done yet or not, but I thought I'd post it in its current form anyway. I used some more iridescent gold paint for the background and decided to keep things loose and abstract, which is a real difficult practice for me. I found this horse grazing in a field in Billings, but the reference photo I took was not too impressive - the sky was gray and the colors were dull overall. I thought a representative look might jazz it up a bit.