Purple Mountains Majesty

Purple Mountains Majesty | 82”x 20” | Oil on Canvas

God Bless the USA. The American Bald Eagle truly is majestic, a great symbol for our country. This dramatic “life size” image allows us to see the full wingspan of a mature adult bald eagle at 6’6” tip to tip. Hope Rutledge took the photograph I referenced for this painting, I appreciate Hope's skill as a photographer, her efforts to educate us on birds of prey and her allowing me to reference her image. You can see more of Hope’s work here.

The purple mountains featured here are the peaks of Snowbasin, host of the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Alpine Skiing events, including downhill, super-G, slalom, and giant slalom.
 
I painted the sky in a dappled fashion in honor of Utah landscape artist LeConte Stewart (1981-1990) who used a dappled effect in the sky of many of his paintings. Stewart was one of two painters whose paintings I was exposed to as a child. He lived in my home town (Kaysville, Utah) and I believe I have some relation to him through my mother.
 
While in my early teens, my mother talked of getting me painting lessons from Stewart, this never happened. I don’t know if it’s true, but, I speculate that due to my lazy nature at that age, she hesitated signing me up, though it may have been the expense, or her busy life raising 7 kids. As it happens, LeConte Stewart attended The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for a year, I did not know this until after I too (years later) had attended this same prestigious school of art.

The other painter, Alpheus Harvey (1900-1976), also of Kaysville, was my mothers uncle, brother to my grandmother Doritt Harvey Brough. I did meet Alpheus once, but unfortunately did not know until after his death that he was an artist, let alone the artist of the paintings I had been admiring in my grandmothers home for some years.

I recall going to Alpheus’s home to pick out pumpkins from his patch for our Halloween carving. He and his wife chatted with me for a minute, and, when they found out my mother was Pearl, they would not let me pay for the pumpkins and insisted that I take a few more.

Alpheus’s favorite painter was Paul Cézanne, this is reflected in his landscape paintings. It was one of Alpheus’s paintings, hanging in my grandmothers home, hat had impressions of my mothers little girl fingers in the sky. She had touched the wet paint and he had not “fixed” it. This story stirred my interest in the painting (see My Story). My mother told me that although Alpheus was a good painter, he did not produce as many paintings as he could have, because he so enjoyed being out working with his
cattle.
 
"You should have the Art you Love."