Ride Em Cowboy Painting

“everybody Loves Clowns and cowboys, for a just a little while till the spotlight dims …no one cares to hang around”, song lyrics by S.Dorff, G.Harju and S. Garret Life is like a rodeo, it is all about courage and timing. Back when my life was new, I watched people. Some would say, I studied them and painted about them in an attempt to figure out the why and the what of people and how they interact with their relationship to their environment. My early paintings were based on my memories of visits to locations where strangers where walking or sitting. In those paintings, the only interactions of the figures, I painted where with the animals they encountered in the painting. As I recall, the past only expressed my wonder in how people even though they are social creatures could be isolated in a park, or a zoo or in the center of a city. The early paintings where about the people not like my latter work , in which I concentrate on the landscape. The choice of using theme of rodeo, is a return or a continuation of my search for understanding people. These current paintings are based on my memories of my attending, pretending l was in one and watching rodeos. The last rodeo my daughter and I attended, just a few years ago, was held to raise money for a charity to help sick children. Needless to say, I became enamored with the people and their animals. I have discovered much about rodeo people and their animals. Who knew, my insights, facts, an attempt to comment, interpret, paint and study - why the rodeo still brings people together in 21th century.