February 26, 2024
Runway Cowboy was born in 2017 on a visit to Wyoming where my husband, Greg, and I were visiting our very dear friend Ann. It wasn’t long after we arrived in Wyoming that I purchased a new cowboy hat! I love cowboy hats and have been in a quest for years to find the perfect cowboy hat that fits my head. I think if I ever find it I might not take it off!
The morning after I bought my new hat began with the three of us taking a walk along a stream at the base of a mountain. It was sunny and just warm enough to leave my jacket in the car. It wasn’t long into our walk that I noticed my shadow on the stone path. Wow, this shadow was wearing a cowboy hat! I was instantly mesmerized by my shadow figure and stopped to begin taking pictures of it in different poses, like those struck by a professional runway model capturing the energy and drama of the show, and of course showing off my fantastic hat just so. Lost in this moment of joy and creativity I hardly noticed that the others had walked ahead. It wasn’t until later, when we had returned to the car, that I was asked what I had seen that was so interesting that caused me to fall behind. Without any hesitation I replied, “Runway Cowboy!” I proceeded to explain how cool my shadow was with the angle of the morning sun, the underlying texture created by the stone path, and of course my new hat. After a bit of laughing, as you might imagine, our friend shared with us that she hadn’t wanted to scare us earlier so she had left the bear spray at home, but we needed to be careful because bears were not uncommon in this area and it would be safer for us to stay together. Good to know! But Runway Cowboy had been born and it had been all worth it!
It wasn’t until the following year when I returned to Wyoming again, this time to attend an artist workshop with Ann, who is also an artist, that I painted Runway Cowboy for the first time. For one of our assignments the workshop instructor had asked us to create a layer of color on one of our prepared painting surfaces. That was about it— very minimal instructions and the color choice was left up to us. Later that day, after this first layer of paint had dried, we were given the rest of the instructions. I remember standing there looking down at the painting I had started, studying the flow of the colors, and thinking about the instructions we had just received– Runway Cowboy instantly came to my mind. I quickly found one of my favorite pictures that I had saved on my phone during my previous trip– and my impromptu photo shoot alongside the stream in grizzly country– and I proceeded to paint Runway Cowboy 2018. The happiness and joy I had experienced the previous year when I created my shadow inspiration was present once again in that moment.
A lot has happened since 2018. But at 63 years old I still find my shadow fascinating and my favorite, and most joyful shadow is still Runway Cowboy who likes to show up on the days I wear my cowboy hat. No wonder he’s my fav! So it seems only natural for me as I begin my new painting series, which I’m calling Joy, that I should look once again at that favorite photo and allow it to inspire me. This time I have used my shadow muse to paint the story of Runway Cowboy - Shadow Spirit…
So you may ask, how do I paint a shadow’s spirit? Red, Blue, Yellow– where do I start? With the right proportions of red, blue and yellow I can paint all the colors and hues of human skin. Basically my outward visual appearance as Gary is an ever changing, personal formula of red, blue and yellow. So for my inward spirit colors I decided to use the colors of the rainbow, representing how my spirit reflects my individual and unique mixture of primary colors. Creating and painting the story of Runway Cowboy’s joyful spirit!
I have, for as long as I can remember, been enthralled by my shadow. I remember as a kid making it dance, stretch, and wave. I remember looking for it on a cloudy day when it was being bashful, turning my back to it or sitting on the ground with my head turned into the sun where I couldn’t see it— but I knew it was still there waiting for me to turn around or turn my head to look at it. So much fun, a part of so many happy memories and now Runway Cowboy, who I waited over fifty years to meet, is my most joyful and favorite shadow of all— so far.
In the painting I use mixtures of iridescent paint and transparent layers of color to create an ethereal shimmer. I must confess that metallic and iridescent paint have become my new guilty-pleasure. Recently I found a single tube of metallic gold acrylic paint left over from my art school days in the 70’s. When I discovered the tube, mostly unused, I thought to myself… okay, why not try it? So, I began using it and now the tube is almost empty- more fun! Runway Cowboy’s spirit would need a good measure of metallic or iridescent paint and just as my shadow appears darker or lighter from the intensity of light, so does Runway Cowboy’s spirit colors change by not only increasing their transparency, but also by adding some wonderful iridescent pearl paint to the color mixtures to make them shimmer. To form the background and the painting’s surface, I draw from my spiritual reflections on the ocean and the earth, adding to the painting’s spiritual story– developing deep blues and transparent aquas representing ocean colors and building layers of paint to create a textured, scored surface representing stone. For me, blue is the color of God and gazing at the shimmering reflections of sunlight upon the ocean’s waters, or into the reflections of it’s crystal clear water is like watching the dance of collective spirits– collected and held within the rich blues of the ocean’s depth– and the earth invites my touch. With these spiritual reflections, imagery, and joyful memories in mind I began to paint the story of Runway Cowboy-Spirit Shadow, allowing this story to emerge in the joyful twist of his body caught in the midst of doing a little jig and his right hand waving happily while simultaneously, with a quick flick of the wrist, allowing the three joyful spirit coins he has been carrying to fall into his magical bag where he stores all the joyful memories he has gathered.
I’ll look forward to my next opportunity to paint Runway Cowboy. Maybe I’ll use my second favorite photo of him taken on another morning, during another trip when I had brought along my cowboy hat to wear. I think the hat fits his shadow head better than my actual head. I was convinced my cowboy hat needed to be very, very snug so it wouldn’t blow off and away in the Wyoming winds. LOL!
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