Category Archives: American Paintings

When I decided to paint this picture, I wondered if this was taking it too far. But, sometimes you have to speak forcefully, like the brushstrokes of my painting. Many Americans have felt forgotten by the establishment in Washington. I’m talking about the people who are more interested in themselves, and their political careers.

How many veterans have been neglected? How many of our police officers have been marginalized? How many families are suffering because of poor healthcare, limited opportunities, and government intrusion?

Last year we elected President Trump. He expressed by his words and demeanor what Americans wanted – a man who was not going to bow down to Washington or other countries. A man that would not forget the “forgotten men and women” of this country who elected him.

I want a president that will crush the enemies of liberty, justice, and American prosperity.

They may have the power to bruise his heal, but he will have the power to crush their head!

Are you willing to engage the liars, crooks, and government elites that are destroying America? WILL YOU support those who will speak out against fraud, cronyism, globalism, and corruption?

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Standing in a war zone as the fires ignite around him, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart calmly holds up a pistol target. He’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes, regardless of the cost!

Andrew mysteriously died March 1, 2012, just three weeks before he promised to unveil “damning” new video evidence of Barack Obama’s radical past that would change the election. Many believed his death was not a simple heart attack as the press reported; the questionable events and evidence pointed to the unthinkable.

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Christmas Eve, 1862 near Fredericksburg, VA, General JEB Stuart hosted a party that featured, great food, fun, and dancing. The Virginia Reel was the dance of choice. Ironically, the next day, Stuart and his 1800 horseman would make their famous Christmas Day Raid in Northern Virginia.

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The scene is Christmas Eve in colonial Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at Market and Second. The American colonists are in their 20th year of independence.

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Hillary is a con-artist and has painted a careful picture of herself, but behind the paint lies the truth. Hidden between the strokes is a silent “scream” from the victims of her deceit. Will they never have justice?

What about the four Americans she left to die in Benghazi?

What about the families of the victims she attempted to comfort, explaining it was all because of a video?

What about lying to the American people about her email servers and risking our national security?

What about the many women her husband sexually assaulted while she covered for him?
She lies. Does anyone hear me?

When Albert Bierstadt painted Rocky Mountain Landscape in 1870, he had not seen the Rockies for seven years. He worked from studies made in 1863, during his second trip to the West. He had recently returned from a triumphal two-year tour of Europe; the following year he would go west again.

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Bierstadt’s dramatic sense was keen, and he was a master at the creative transformation of a few basic compositions. He adopted devices associated with the theater: The contrast of the darkened proscenium and wings with the light-struck sky and water enhances the scene. The eye moves into the space by diagonal steps, from the family of deer (the only animate objects in the painting) just right of center, to the stand of trees, to the right distance, and to the soaring cathedral rock across the water. Finally, the most distant snow-covered peaks are seen at top left center. Against this Bierstadt develops a curvilinear play in the cuplike curves of rocks and lakeshore. With the clarity and spatial penetration of a stereographic view (his use of photography is well documented), he rivets our gaze. The innumerable oil sketches from which he composed his large canvases are typified by the brisk cloud study reproduced above. It is alive with the exhilaration of on-the-spot observation.

In Rocky Mountain Landscape the shopworn adjectives “spellbinding” and “breathtaking” regain their identity, conveying the awestruck wonder the artist induces in the viewer. Both words imply the suspension of time. The cascades suggest neither sound nor motion; the great cloudbanks are stopped in their ascent; the still water of the lake mirrors the rocks and locks them to the foreground shore through the complex and beautiful pattern of reflections.

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August 19, 1812: The USS Constitution, commanded by Issac Hull, was victorious in battle with the British frigate HMS Guerriere today off the coast of Nova Scotia.

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The battle lasted 20 minutes, and when the smoke cleared, HMS Guerriere was virtually destroyed with the Constitution sustaining minimal damage.

British sailors reportedly said that their cannon balls “bounced off” the American ship “as if her sides were made of iron”.*

*The USS Constitution became known as “Old Ironsides”. Today it can be toured at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston.

The USS Constitution was built in Boston, Massachusetts & launched on October 21, 1797.

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A character study on a small scale, the painting attempts to capture something of the human condition. In this case, the bond that often exists between the very old and the very young. While the setting represents rural American life, the farmer braiding corn in his barn as the young girl approaches with a hat full of eggs, perhaps the original title, “Seeking Advice”, gives a better sense of the artist’s intent – in particular, the passing on of simple information from one generation to another.

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A painting inspired by Thomas Moran’s sketch of Green River tops Christie’s auction of William Koch’s Western artworks.

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Before 34-year-old Thomas Moran reached his ultimate destination of Yellowstone in Wyoming Territory in the summer of 1871, he stepped off the Union Pacific Railroad and viewed the towering cliffs of the Green River. The artist completed a field study that he later inscribed, “First Sketch Made in the West.”

Moran would return to this first Western subject of his many times during his storied career. His 1896 oil of Green River, featuring a troop of American Indians in the lower right, was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and appeared at auction for the first time, on May 21, 2015, at Christie’s New York. Not surprisingly, this rare work of art landed the top bid, at $7.5 million.

The painting was sold from the collection of American businessman William Koch, who is most famously known in the Old West collecting arena for paying $2.1 million for the only known photograph of outlaw Billy the Kid. Koch has been collecting Western artworks for an Old West town he hopes to build, but he ran out of room and decided to put some of the treasures on the auction block.

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Pilgrims Going To Church (1867) — originally The Early Puritans of New England Going to Church — is a celebrated and much reproduced painting by Anglo-American painter George Henry Boughton (1833–1905).

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