Wilder Nightingale Fine Art

I grew up in the shadows of grain elevators. Many years were spent in fields, hauling hay, working crops, watching the weather, and viewing the vibrant colors that nature and man created with the land.

In my artwork I am creating an observance of the effects of human interaction with the landscape and the sky. Whether it is snow drifting across roads and fields, a field with hay bales, an area that has eroded from too many years of over work, the patchwork and circles created by planting, irrigation and roads, the viewer gathers information by just observing what interaction has happened in that place.

The titles of my pieces are usually answers to questions. These titles, or “answers”, are from conversations I overheard farmers and ranchers having as I was growing up working the land.

What I hope to achieve in using these “answers” as titles is to cause the viewer to create their own question that fits the “answer”, or title of the piece. At many of my exhibits this has sparked lively and creative discussions about what is going on in the painting. Each viewer brings their own unique ideas and stories to the piece, and thus a two dimensional piece of art begins to come off of the wall and becomes a personal, yet ever-changing experience.

"Winter"
I grew up in the midst of the deep, cold winters of the Midwest. And then, I lived may years without them. Perhaps it is some combination of these factors that has instilled in me such a wonder of this season – a longing for it.  In Winter, the air is brittle. Fog, snow and frost are mesmerizing.  The "face" and feel of the landscape are transformed.  Everything changes from Summer's green to a cloak of stillness and white: beauty stripped to it's essence. Quiet prevails. Light takes center stage. We wait to begin again.

The "Big Sky" series :
It seems the sky has always beckoned. It has always featured prominently in my work. Yet, the sky that I have encountered living in Colorado has influenced it even further.  On the high desert plains, the sky completely dominates the landscape;  that intense blue holding the land on the horizon.  That Big Sky. Vibrant and endless. Always the point of perspective. A sentinel, stretching even above the mountains' rocky altitudes.