MONET IN MONTANA

For a 4-H club project when I was a 12 or 13, I raised a sheep named Hoppy. At the time we had a goat with two kids, and the kids would stand on top of Hoppy. She didn’t mind. I really like sheep, so I intend to paint them often. In this particular painting, I make reference to a Monet work titled “The Turkeys at Montgeron, 1877,” which I saw a few years ago in a Paris art museum. I also love the Gravelly Range in Southwest Montana, where I had photographed a sheepherder’s wagon near Black Butte (the neck of an old volcano) in the 1980s. OK, so I decided to arrange sheep in the approximate location of Monet’s turkeys, and instead of a chateau at the top of the painting I placed the sheepherder’s wagon. The piece is 20” x 24” on a pre-used canvas, which provided interesting textures. I tried making the grasses the same color as Monet’s, but ended up using a palette knife to scumble lighter colors over the green-blue. And, of course, every band of sheep deserves a good guard dog, so I placed Sudsie in the scene. There’s an “accidental” quality to the piece. This is also the first painting of mine that I actually L-O-V-E.

Monet's painting is 5'8" x 5'8"

MONET IN MONTANA, 

20" x 24" Mixed Media on Canvas

by Rae Ellen Lee

Work in progress. Too much green-blue.