Working on a landscape.

High Desert Landscapes

When I first showed Carl Barks and his wife Garé some of my fine-art cartoon paintings, the first thing she tried to do was talk me out of doing them. By the early 1980s she had been a professional landscape artist for two decades, selling to galleries all over the west. She told me, correctly, that I'd never be able to sell my cartoon paintings, that there was simply no market for them if the name "Carl Barks" wasn't attached. She even gave me the contact information for her publisher, Leanin' Tree, to encourage me to paint landscapes instead of funny animals. I'm glad I didn't take her advice. Landscapes that are meant to decorate homes are just as much kitsch as Disney paintings, they just sell to a different audience and aren't as fun to paint.

I did start painting landscapes in 2005. Why? Because living in the high desert of Central Oregon, how could I not? There is an amazing variety of landscapes within twenty minutes of my home: rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes, meadows, badlands, lava tube caves, volcanic plains and buttes, the Cascade Range, Smith Rock, and more. Whenever I need a break from painting fine-art cartoons, I just look outside my studio window. There is never a shortage of inspirational views.