Sun On A Cliff (28 x 22)
Here’s a new painting, fresh off the easel. Based on a trip to Dubois, Wyoming this past September. My friend Greg Beecham (gbeecham.com – check out his amazing wildlife paintings) offered to guide a few artists up the mountain behind his house to this beautiful canyon. I was the driver as Greg navigated us up over small boulders, across dry creek beds, deep into grizzly country.
The higher we climbed, the narrower and rockier the trail became, until pine branches were clawing at both sides of my rented SUV. We had to park and hike the rest of the way in. No guns, no pepper spray. We were raw meat walking itself into the bears’ dining room. Greg sensed that some of us were on edge, so he kindly pointed out that mountain lions are the real problem, because you never hear them coming.
We hiked a narrow path of loose gravel punctuated by dry, gnarled tree limbs, with a rock wall heading skyward on our left and a sobering dropoff of several hundred feet only one stride or two to the right. The trail ended at this spot I painted, as sunlit rocks sang out against deep violet shadows.
It was a great day gathering material for paintings, plus I simultaneously confronted my fear of heights and my fear of being eaten alive by a large mammal.
