I thought you might enjoy a sampling of studies that I did back in October. I’d intended to travel all the way to Zion National Park, but after a late start I called Robert Moore, a friend and mentor who lives near the Idaho/Utah border. So it was that I stayed at Robert’s studio and painted the area for four days. I never made it to the desert. Check out the studies and I hope you’ll see why: (Click on any of the images for enlargements.)

What a quiet, subtle, and peaceful corner of the West! I’m starting to work in pastel on location again, and I’m really enjoying switching back-and-forth between oil and pastel. The moonrise piece was especially satisfying. I finished it with the aid of a headlamp, so I really had no idea if the piece worked. Currently I’m working on some larger pieces based on a couple of the studies, so I will post those as soon as they are done.

I thought I’d throw in a picture of Robert Moore. Here he is, working on a 30×40 on location!

I managed a 9×12, but I was still happy. It’s hard not to paint well with Robert. He is generous, kind, a great critic, and he can paint with two brushes at the same time! And he does a great imitation of a Russian painter contemplating the beautiful reflections in a mud puddle.

September in Yellowstone is all about fighting and sex. It’s a great spectacle: testosterone in overdrive. Bulls fight, harass cows, strut, bugle, sleep, and fight some more. They even piss on themselves and roll in piss-mud wallows to make home-brewed cologne. Somehow this impresses the cows.

Much of this happens right in Mammoth, a little tourist town in the Park.

It’s a strange backdrop for one of nature’s most magnificent dramas, but it’s a great place to sketch elk. A sculptor friend, George Bumann, invited me down for the show. I’ve never sketched elk from life, and it shows:

As you can see I mostly sketched napping cows. Don’t look too closely. The proportions are all off, but I was having a great time! George knows his animal anatomy inside and out, and he offered occasional suggestions to help me correct problems in anatomy.

After lunch I’d had enough of the “urban elk” so I drove up past Mammoth Terraces and set up my easel in an aspen patch. What a joy to be there! Autumn colors, elk bugling just out of sight, and I have my brushes!

Here’s a study that I did that afternoon:

After the painting session I hiked cross-country and scared up a solitary bull from his bed. I caught glimpses of him running through the brush and over the hill. I ran parallel and stole another look as he trotted across a sage-brush hillside and disappeared into an aspen-patch.

I want to paint that brief pulse-quickening encounter!

Why? Because I’d rather let you in on a private experience than impress you with all the drama of bugling bulls.

A term popped into my head as I walked back to the van: Experiential Realism.

A wildlife painter can get all the photo reference he wants on some game preserve, but meanwhile George Bumann is somewhere in Yellowstone filling another sketchbook. He’s chained himself to the spotting scope and he knows what the animals do and why they do it.

And he’ll be the better artist for it.

It’s far more comfortable to paint in the studio from my trusted photos; I have thousands. But photos don’t smell of damp leaves and rain. Clouds never interrupt the fine afternoon light. And I’ve never heard elk bugling just beyond the studio. More often than not I come home from the field with what I affectionately call “scrapers.” Failed paintings. But the failures add to a collective wisdom that I bring back to the studio. Though I am not a narrative painter my paintings are infused with stories, experiences that deepen the expression. Without returning again and again to the field I just start making pretty pictures. Anyone can do that. I’d rather speak of my experience, my reality, because there is beauty in it. That’s Experiential Realism.

I’ve just been elected a signature member of the Pastel Society of America.  That means I get write PSA after my signature on my pastels, a “meaningful designation in the art community and for potential buyers.” The Pastel Society of America is described as “America’s Oldest and Most Prestigious Pastel Society.”  It basically means I’m recognized in the pastel world.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m pretty happy about all this!