Ghost Riders (32" x 48", oil on canvas, 1996)
Unlike most of my paintings, this one began to emerge early on as an image that told a story. That's extremely rare in my paintings. Normally the forms emerge through a process of experimenting with shape and color with no idea of image; if references to anything outside the visual elements are there, they appear through an unconscious process, and I normally recognize them only after the fact. Not so this time. The mostly white shape on the left spoke to me long before the painting was finished. It was a ghost horse with a rider. I was reminded of the scene in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" where Pea Eye is saved by the ghost of Deets. It is not a literal illustration of that scene, but the emotions evoked by it were with me as I worked on it, and I tried to keep true to that feeling. I can't remember all the details of that episode in the book, but I do remember the television version of the story. In that version, Deets and Pea Eye were on foot. In my version they are riding a ghost horse and whatever that other creature is that Pea Eye is perched upon.
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