New crop of paintings begun in the Bootheel

02 Dec New crop of paintings begun in the Bootheel

Posted December 4, 2025 from Seattle, WA, USA

I have underside-flight-paintings of Red-tailed Hawk and Osprey at the store, high above the entrance. Most people don’t see or don’t notice them, but then, who knows what we notice subliminally, right?

I have long felt I needed a Bald Eagle to make it a threesome up there, and that would be all three of the raptors that are commonly seen soaring or flapping high overhead in Western Washington. I was delighted that this painting came together ok, I’ve had trouble in the past with Bald Eagles, and I made some misteps on this one publishing too soon when I got back from New Mexico and taking it down some dead ends, but I like it now.

Painting in the New Mexico bootheel tends to be really a great experience for me. I don’t have to go downstairs to paint, like I do in Seattle, so I can stay closer to Delia. Plus the light is unbelievable down there, what with less latitude and less atmosphere, we’re at 5700 ft. elevation.

This Pileated start is from a photo I took in Seward Park. It will be a challenge to get the background to look like backlit oldgrowth forest, but I feel like the Pileated is already pretty close.

I started a painting of a Trogon–the species that traditionally nests in SE Arizona’s riparian canyons, about five years ago and it failed of boredom, something was wrong. This start is much more promising, just need a little time to get it done hopefully without losing the feel that it has now.

This painting has a strange history. I took a snapshot of a Blue-winged Teal circa 1982 at the Seattle Zoo, and it had the magic, I thought I might paint from it someday. Then about 12 or 15 years later a corrupt, in the sense of more interested in his own aggrandizement than doing his job, art-promoter demanded all the artists paint a small painting for him as well as the entrance fee. I dashed off a small painting from the shot and thought that painting was exceptional, and I became a bit bitter that I wouldn’t be able to use it for my own purposes, as it was too small to reproduce at the time. After painting it once, I didn’t feel like painting it again, that impulse was spent. But there’s an expiration date on all this stuff, and it passed, and I feel mean-spirited in fact for telling the story, and I’m having a blast now painting from this ref shot and another one slightly similar I found in a Ducks Unlimited magazine where the Teal was letting the viewer see his blue wing. (I paint free-hand but am very reliant on reference photos, especially in getting the painting underway.

Common Yellowthroat is a Bird that occupies a special place in my heart, as I’m sure it does others. It used to nest on our property back in Pennsylvania when I was growing up in the 60’s. It has a delightful song that is the soundtrack of a healthy wetland. It is terminally cute. I’m working from a shot I took out in the Snoqualmie Valley in 2023. The Bird was foraging around in Cottonwood foliage that was hanging down to the ground near the Snoqualmie River.