In the Dandelion Field

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In the Dandelion Field 

acrylic on canvas 12" x 24" 

Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

We saw this beautiful white horse outside of Wisdom, Montana. I was nervous about painting her, since I didn't want her painting to end up looking like 1980s-era white unicorn poster...but she was too pretty not to put on canvas! The yellow accents have some iridescent gold paint mixed in to give them a subtle shimmer (yep, still using that gold paint...I love the color tint it produces even more than the shimmery effect).

As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to take more liberties with my painting. Although I used a lot of texture on the first main background layer for this piece, I didn't use nearly as much paint as I usually do for the remaining layers. The rest of the background was created by literally scraping paint onto the surface with palette knives. I rotated this knife method with doing color washes with a brush, and I think this created a lot more depth to the color than otherwise. The horse itself is a bit translucent in places - I wanted her to blend in a bit with the background. To give her a similar depth, I painted her using multiple layers of thin washes in varying shades of blue, yellow, green, and white (some palette knife scraping was involved as well).

Now my brothers call from the bay, 
Now the great winds shoreword blow, 
Now the salt tides seaward flow; 
Now the wild white horses play, 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 
-Matthew Arnold, The Foresaken Merman

Vigilante - SOLD

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Vigilante

acrylic on canvas

12" x 24"

SOLD

We came across this horse in the "living" ghost town of Virginia City, Montana, which is a beautifully restored Victorian gold mining town that had me absolutely captivated. This particular horse was providing stagecoach rides - I thought she'd look much prettier without the bridle for the painting.

"Virginia! How great was Virginia! She sat like a queen beside a golden stream... her gathered wealth built many a palace, and caused the lines of polished steel to wend their way across a continent."

-Noyes, A History of Southwest Montana

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