Artist`s Notes
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Montana
Montana has been known as the Big Sky Country, and in more recent times as the Last Best Place. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in this magnificent state with its snow capped mountain ranges, broad fertile valleys, crystal clear streams, evergreen forests, brilliant blue lakes, and the wide open spaces of the eastern half of the state. Glacier Park, the crown jewel of the northern Rocky Mountains offers magnificent, world-class alpine scenery. Montana is also a land of ranches, cowboys, rodeos, wheat fields and grain elevators, as well as of rolling plains, buttes, and badlands. As an artist I also find inspiration in the striking cloud buildups that the late singer John Denver described in a song title as the “Wild Montana Skies.” The winters can be very cold, especially in the eastern part of the state. Summers in Montana are a special time when the days are long, the sunshine is brilliant, the days are warm, and the nights are pleasantly cool.
The Bitterroot Valley
Many of my Montana paintings are scenes from the Bitterroot Valley that runs southward from Missoula. The valley offers commanding views of the jagged peaks of the Bitterroot range of mountains that form the boundary between Montana and Idaho to the west. Clear, cold mountain streams cascade down the many deep canyons of the Bitterroots before joining the Bitterroot River that meanders northward through the valley before flowing into the Clark Fork River just west of Missoula. In the heart of the valley is the Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge with its large peaceful pond and marshes that offer a tranquil escape from the bustle of residential development that has sprawled over parts of the valley. The views from the Metcalf Refuge are especially beautiful as the sun drops behind the Bitterroot Mountains leaving the valley in an extended period of evening twilight.
The High Plains and the Homestead Era
I have always had an affection for the vast spaces of the high plains of the western Dakotas and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. Many travelers find this region boring and speed through as quickly as possible on the interstate highways. To me, the dry, fresh air and persistent breezes along with the open, largely treeless landscapes are liberating after coming from the heat, humidity and limited vistas of the southeast and Midwest. In late spring the grasslands are green, there is a profusion of wildflowers, and the air is fragrant. The hot dry summer weather turns the landscape to browns and golds by mid-August. My mother grew up a century ago on a homestead in the badlands of western North Dakota near the small town of Sentinel Butte. It is hard to imagine how challenging it was for her pioneer family, including her six brothers, to make a life there and survive the harsh climate. I can see my mother shyly standing behind her mother in South Dakota painter Harvey Dunn’s well known work The Prairie is My Garden which beautifully portrays the homestead life. Now as I drive through the region, my eyes scan the landscape for the old abandoned houses and farm buildings that have somehow withstood the elements, at least until now.
North Carolina
North Carolina, also known as the Tar Heel state, has been my home for several decades while I have been a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. It is a diverse state that ranges from the broad sandy beaches of its lengthy coastline and barrier islands in the east to the Appalachian Mountains in the west, which include the highest peaks in the eastern United States. In between is the rolling country of the Piedmont, where the state’s major cities are located. What attracts me most as a painter are the rural areas, in particular the country churches, old wood frame houses with inviting front porches, and weathered tobacco barns. Occasionally, I take a day to drive the back roads of eastern North Carolina in search of subjects to paint. Each year it seems as if I have to drive further from Raleigh to escape the many new subdivisions sprouting up from the farms lands that were once used to raise cotton and gold leaf tobacco.
New England
New England is arguably the most picturesque region of the United States. My first experience there was the four years I spent as a student at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, just across the Connecticut River from Vermont. More recently I was a visiting professor of global environmental studies at Williams College in Williamstown, a small town tucked away in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. That year, which had record snowfalls, I drove the curvy back roads of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts looking for scenes to paint. The landscapes there are much cozier than the broad expanses of Montana and the great plains. Villages with a central green, a traditional inn, an old white frame church, and a general store preserve a more relaxing way of life. Many of the large old farmhouses scattered around the countryside have survived the harsh New England climate for a century or two, or even longer. The brilliant fall colors of the hardwood forests are spectacular, but I find the region even more beautiful under a deep fresh blanket of snow.
International Travels
I have traveled in more than forty countries in Scandinavia, eastern and western Europe, eastern and southern Asia, Arabia, Oceania, and the
Americas. Many of these trips have been made for professional reasons, such as conferences, workshops, or Fulbright seminars, while on others I have simply been as a tourist. Among my foreign experiences are teaching at universities in Finland and Bulgaria, getting acquainted with relatives in the magnificent fjord country of Norway, visiting a gur (circular white tent home) of nomadic herders on the vast grasslands of Mongolia, shopping in the exotic bazaars of the Middle East, conducting painting demonstrations in China, observing the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, touring the lavish palaces and summer homes of the Indian maharajas, wandering along the picturesque canals of Venice, exploring the sacred cities of the Incas in the highlands of Peru, and trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal. I haven’t painted scenes from all of these countries. However, as time permits I draw upon an extensive collection of reference photographs and slides from around the world, which grows with each year’s travels.
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