Summer Relief

Summer Relief
acrylic on canvas
24" x 12"
$625 framed
Available for purchase through Freshwater Studio & Gallery, Dillon, MT (contact)


Sketching this moose prior to painting him was my first foray into the world of moose-drawing. They're beautiful creatures - I love those big goofy grins and huge noses. I remember being in the Grand Tetons once with my parents when I was young...we were hiking and spotted a moose calf no more than 20 feet away from us, just off the trail. Its mother was close by, eyeing us suspiciously and ready to trample us if need be. It was really quite an impressive encounter, and I gained a lot of healthy respect for those big animals. And here's my little nod to them: a bull moose getting some relief from the summer heat.

I used my new iridescent pearl paint for this one. It's particularly noticeable when the light hits it from different angles.


"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it alright will rather preserve its life than destroy it."
-Henry David Thoreau

Uphill

(click images to enlarge)

Uphill

acrylic on canvas
24" x 12"
$625 framed
Available for purchase through Freshwater Studio & Gallery, Dillon, MT (contact)

The mighty American bison is truly a remarkable creature - it's so solid and powerful. What I love in particular about them, though, is how they're both majestic and goofy - they always have that ridiculous patchy fur in warm weather and they like to roll around in the mud as much as a dog does.

The background for this painting consists of several layers with both palette knife and brush work. I wanted it to have a sort of cave-ish appearance, and the acrylic gels work really well when trying to achieve a rocky, organic look. The buffalo himself is painted in shades of red and yellow, and his horns & hooves have a blue-ish tint to them.

"The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same."
-Heraclitus of Ephesus

Running With Ancestors

Running With Ancestors

acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

14" x 18"

Available at Proctor Art Gallery, Tacoma, WA

(contact)

This has been sitting in my studio for over a month, waiting to be photographed. I used the same fluffy molding paste with this painting as I did with the buffalo.

David felt that the white horse looked like a ghost and came up with the name for this one.

When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon and Sophron and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Representative Men