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Cowgirl

Someone said I needed more tension in my paintings so I added the guns.

Cowboy

Hard Ride’n Straight Shoot’n Woman

Pursuit

The wicked flee when no one pursues pursues, but the righteous are bold as lions.   Proverbs

Old Friends

A Swedish friend looked at this painting and exclaimed “Oh look how different the work place is here!”

Lost 7th Cavalry Scout

…“It’s mostly bones we’re riding over, anyway.  Why think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains.   Buffalo and other critters too.  And the Indians have been here forever; their bones are down in the earth.  I’m told that in the old country you can’t dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such.  People have been here since the beginning, and their bones kinda fill up the ground….” Larry McMurtry  ‘Lonesome Dove’

It strikes me as rather arrogant to say that we own a piece of ground.  We walk around on the earth for a short time. Our bones will lie in the earth for a long time.  From this prospective it may be more accurate to say the earth owns us.  Today we are walking on someone’s bones. Someday some new people will be walking on our bones. The thought is humbling, as it is true, and there is a certain unpleasantness about the topic with a natural temptation to avoid it. However, the meditation may help us to better appreciate the lives of those who have gone before us, and more fully value the short life we have been given to walk on the earth.

Oil 34×27” $5999

Gicklee’ 29×23” $249

Lost Apostles

My son, fresh out of college with a major in literature, saw this painting and exclaimed, “Oh, isn’t this the way it is?  We always look over the backs of the colonists at the culture we’ve lost.”  A contractor friend of mine commented, “This is just like the local spiritual quest meetings when the fundamentalists and the new age people faced off.”  A songwriter friend said, “It’s a sad painting, portraying lost innocence.” The topic of intermingling cultures has always fascinated me.  There is so much to gain; there is so much to lose.

The Lost Buffalo

This painting lay stored unfinished in my studio for several years.  On September 12, 2001 I drove from our secluded farm up near the Canadian border to a care center in St Paul where my father lay dying.   I watched on a monitor beside my father’s deathbed the explosions at the World Trade Center. After   his funeral I pulled out this painting and added the prairie fire.  I thought of calling it ‘America Under Siege’.  Now I think the painting is about the end of an era and the beginning of another.

Study of Caravaggio’s ‘The Conversion of Saint Paul’

This study is an allegory of my own conversion to Christianity.  My wife Kathy was not present at my road to Damascus, but since there is a groom in the Caravaggio, I thought it would be appropriate to include her.  While I experience my revelations and trials Kathy always aloof maintains a transcendent faith and confidence or an unaffected disconnect with my ‘frequent’ passions.

Like Paul my conversion caused a tremendous change in my life’s direction.  Like Paul my passion and the warrior still remained and if anything they were intensified, but to a different purpose.

Study of Ruben’s ‘Rape of the daughters of Leucippus’

Brothers, Pollex and Caster with the force of will and brute strength, manipulated and pushed destiny to make sure it really happened.

I’ve heard a couple of versions of this story.  My favorite is the least sinister.  Though betrothed to marry the daughters of Leucippus they eloped and brought the women to their homes, avoiding the public ceremony.  In all the stories the brothers and their abducted wives begot a family of fierce warriors.