Projects

I had a wonderful show of my paintings earlier this winter. Tom Mangelsen let me hang my paintings in the loft of his Jackson, Wyoming gallery. I am his assistant and get to travel the world with him. This most recent show consisted of paintings from the past years' travel as well as a few older paintings. It was great to see how the images worked together once they were on the walls. I had only seen them laying around the house. The lines of color ran from one to the other so even though there would be a painting of a jaguar hanging next to a zebra the colors tied them all together. We had a full house the night of the opening reception. Tom was showing some new photographs as well. I did sell quite a few paintings too. That is always nice. Now I am working on ways to market them further. I have a shop on Etsy.com - susiepainter. Here is the link http://www.etsy.com/shop/susiepainter. Check out all the animals and the color. WE have so much snow in Wyoming it is nice to have all the color. I have been rehanging images in my house - get them on the walls. This particular painting is from a photo I took of one of 399's (the most famous grizzly in Grand Teton Park) cub. I put it on my wall last night. The eyes of the bear follow you around the room.

Anatomy of a painting

Last fall I was in Yellowstone with my partner, Tom. We were photographing a very large and stately bull elk. His antlers were 6 points on one side and 7 on the other. He had a small harem, 10 or so cows. He was hanging out near Madison Junction. He was quite the traffic stopper. At times there would be a hundred or so people watching him. We watched him off and on for 4 days. Our last morning in Yellowstone we were out early hoping to catch him in the morning fog coming off the river as the day warmed. We were in luck. There was an oxbow in the river, he had his girls on the island created by the oxbow. Occasionally one of the cows would wander across the shallow river, the bull would go get the cow each time. Tom and I were set up near the water watching the elk. Tom had his 600 mm lens on the tripod. We had been there for at least an hour when one of the cows crossed over to graze. She wandered along munching on grass, the bull snorted at her, she ignored him, hmmmm....the bull raced over to get the cow back. The cow started running - she headed straight toward us, the bull running full speed behind her. We became very nervous! I grabbed all the bags and extra cameras and ran back. The cow crossed the river right in front of us. We deserted the 600 lens. The bull stopped just short of the tripod, snorting. He gave us the evil eye. Hence the story of this painting.

Stage one of the painting.



Stage two.


Finished.