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Much Like A Fairy Tale
Wyoming-inspired
30 x 24"
acrylic on canvas
Eclectic Gallery, Coeur d'Alene, ID
We make it to Wyoming and our map reads, “A land of firsts.” The landscape, color and history bring America’s heartland to shame. We walk the wagon ruts in Guernsey and stop to watch young bison nurse from their mothers. At Buffalo Bill Dam, a liquid mirror reflects blue skies and cotton clouds. We pass several ghost towns, full of wooden saloons and rusty wagon wheels. The entrances to private ranches are framed in antlers and steel arches. We stop to visit the world’s largest hot springs in Thermopolis, but refrain from swimming in the manmade pool. Like many other sites we visit, tourism has bastardized the genuine piece of American landscape that it once was. A black moose escorts us to the entrance of Yellowstone, America’s first National Park.
We finally arrive at this ever-changing super volcano. We step out of the car to hear a hissing sound. However, it isn’t the steam rising up around grazing buffalo that emits the noise; it is our right front tire. We find the park’s service center, but it is still closed for the season, so Alfonso digs in the back of the truck for our spare. We then backtrack 85 miles to Cody to have our tire patched and spend the night in a Wal-mart parking lot.
Re-entering Yellowstone the next morning proves to be just as rewarding as the day before. Yellowstone lake, Inspiration Point, Steamboat Geyser, Mammoth Springs, Grand Prismatic, and so much more. It seems a cliché, but the wonders of this land are enough to push any artist into creation. It feels as if we have entered another time or are walking across a foreign planet. This land is not like any I’ve seen before. While traversing the many boardwalks along hydrothermal features, your imagination can easily envision a fierce sea creature emerging from the boiling springs. Approaching a hissing cave, a dragon is seen through the heavy steam. Along the bank of a gurgling mud pond, a fairy sits silently.
The colors of Yellowstone are vibrant and iridescent. A clear sky illuminates florescent green moss and turquoise pools. Suddenly, a shifting wind generates a ceiling of gray. Deep pigments turn pastel as they transcend the thickening fog. The land is alive.
It is true that Yellowstone National Park has a mythological ambience, but Wyoming emits another spirit as well. Aside from being home to the first National Park, Wyoming was also the first state to give women the right to vote (1869), and to have a female judge. Knowing these facts, it seems significant to illustrate the fantasy feeling of the land with a female portrait. In the Wyoming-inspired canvas, a confident woman has been given wings.
****UPDATE- Out of fifty paintings, spread across the entire U.S., forty-nine of them were returned to us for exhibition. The Wyoming piece was placed at Eclectic Gallery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and never returned. The gallery owner, Carol Eagle and the gallery itself are nowhere to be found. Several artists are also looking for their work, and a detective has taken over the case. If you know anything about the where a bouts of this piece, please send an email to TheNomadicProject@gmail.com. A $200 reward will be given for tips leading to its recovery.
