The Naked Silo

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2019 This painting is based on a photo I took at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Fort Macleod, Alberta. I find skeletons and skulls fascinating (we all have at least one , after all) and when I saw this wall display of dozens of buffalo skulls I was mesmerized by the patterns, shapes, shadows, and sheer volume of bones. Here's how that place got its name. It's a coincidence, of course, but I think it's wonderfully appropriate that this was done over top a failed painting I was calling Gravity Loves to Win (see below). Maybe I should have kept that title for this painting...maybe I still could... Detail. My technique on this painting is different from my normal cross-hatch-style of brushwork, largely because I started blocking in shadows with an older brush, giving me a softer look...and I just kept going like that with very little cross-hatching. I did go back in with some sharply-defined darks and highlights, but havi...

16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2007, private collection Here's some more colour experimentation, playing around with lots of red, trying for a sort of hot Albertan sunset look. Or something. It's interesting, anyway. The buffalo in the picture are actually from a display at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump  museum just west of Lethbridge, AB. The museum was built on the site of an actual buffalo jump and is beautiful architecturally, being built into the ground, minimizing its visual impact. I shot the trio from directly underneath as that was most interesting and dramatic angle. *    *    * The   buffalo jump   was used for 5,500 years by the   indigenous peoples of the plains   to kill   buffalo   by driving them off the 11m high cliff. Before the late introduction of horses, the   Blackfoot   drove the buffalo from a grazing area in the   Porcupine Hills   about 3 km west of the site to the "drive lanes", li...