Genre

There are collectors, galleries, and artists who are proponents of a limited genre for an artist. You are a wildlife painter, a western painter, a landscape painter, a sporting dog painter, a still-life painter, etc. Pick one, maybe two of the categories and you will be safe. Everyone will understand your "brand."

For me, I don't think painting should be safe. While I am mostly thought of as a wildlife artist, that is not how I look at it. I don't think of myself as an artist who paints wildlife, but rather as an animal lover who paints. There are also other subjects which grab my attention that I want to capture in oil.

Below you can see a "western" painting I am starting. For me, it is not so much a western painting as it is a story which I wanted to share.

First, the posture of the horse intrigued me. My initial thought was to put a rattlesnake on the ground in front of the horse. On second thought, my lack of good rattlesnake reference (is that a good thing?) cancelled that idea. What about some cattle? In looking through the reference, one image stood out. A cow and newborn calf. Once I mirrored them, the composition fell into place. Below you can see the raw sienna/burnt sienna turpentine value study.