Landscape Paintings

Nancy’s Inspiration for Landscape Paintings

“You cannot live in Montana without having breathless moments of awe every day. The skies are endless inspiration for color, clouds, thunder, rain and brilliant azure days. I take many photos and try to paint plein air in oil for that very reason. Last winter I was outside doing some snow paintings after the day warmed up following a new snowfall. The shadows cast by trees and gullies were so very blue, I questioned what I was seeing!

When the canola fields are in bloom, a great swath of cadmium yellow serves as the foreground, with a backdrop of the distant Rocky Mountains and a cobalt blue sky. It is a simple and elegant landscape waiting to be painted.

I do quite a few tree paintings on silk, having recently completed a large commissioned rainbow eucalyptus piece, more than 6 feet tall. Other favorites are the aspen and river birch in the autumn, my favorite time of year. The tall cottonwood trees seem to have their own agenda, and when they cast their shadows across a white farmhouse I HAVE to try to capture that.

I have painted commissions of homesteads in eastern Montana and Canada where families grew up and no longer live. When visiting the Isle d’Aix off the western coast of France, I photographed French school children in their colorful nautical stripes building sandcastles along the beach – those paintings are in my future! One family of French extraction in Louisiana commissioned some lavender fields and farmhouses for their bedroom. I gladly took that on.”