2025: Connectivity
2025 was a year filled with opportunities for me to share my art and to tell the story of large mammal migration in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. After my artist-in-residence at the Draper Natural History Museum in June, I was invited by the Center of Large Landscape Conservation to be a part of a wildlife conservation art and music event at the Big Sky Center for the Arts (Big Sky, Montana). I brought two paintings to the event: Madison Valley Pronghorn: Neon Terra, and Ursa Via. Both of these paintings feature additional information that may be discovered by using ultraviolet light. Ursa Via is an interpretation of the landscape and highway that runs from south of Bozeman to West Yellowstone, Montana. It includes geographic features, property boundaries, and animal crossing information. Neon Terra highlights pronghorn migration in the Madison Valley, including points south and west. In September, I was part of another CLLC event at Old Main Gallery in Bozeman, MT. CLLC representatives spoke about wildlife migration challenges worldwide, linear ecology, the benefits of highway overpasses to aid animals in their journey and to reduce wildlife-human conflict, their research, and their quest for funding for projects to protect local migration routes.
Above: Big Sky Center for the Arts : Event sponsored by The Center for Large Landscape Conservation and American Rivers as part of the Wildlands Music Festival.
Below: Old Main Gallery, Bozeman
During the Big Sky event in July, I was fortunate to meet the writer Rick Bass. He enlightened me to the environmental importance of the Black Ram Forest in Montana's Yaak Valley, and invited me to visit in September. Rick led me (and Zelda the Weimaraner) through the old forest, speaking to me of its unparalleled biodiversity and the threats to its mostly intact landscape.
Rick, an enthusiastic advocate of integrating art and activism, asked if I could envision a painting from my Yaak experience. I am thrilled to recreate a journey into a landscape that is completely foreign to me. My home landscape is replete with wide-open skies, big valleys, and sagebrush. This forest in the uppermost northwest corner of Montana is an ancient energy field of formidable weight, colored all shades of green. I felt a primordial pull from the roots of these trees, speaking of a history so primitive that it was unnerving to my modern sensibilities.
I began to work on this painting in January 2026. My early vision was that it would be all green, nothing but green. But as I paint, it’s becoming so much more, morphing into a light-filled paradise. Perhaps it is a vision of what the Yaak truly represents: our past (and hopefully, with ongoing conservation efforts), our future.
In October, I went on a wander-about in Wyoming. I traveled south through Yellowstone National Park, encountering both snow and sunshine, on my way to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson. After some gazing at some of my favorites, I settled in for a relaxing evening at the Hatchet Resort near Moran. Then off on a drive that seemed to never end: I headed south and east and north again to Cody. I stopped in at the Draper Natural History Museum in Cody to revisit the painting I created there as an artist-in-residence in June. It was so delightful to see it hanging on a wall! I also made a quick visit to meet with Tony Mong at Wyoming Game and Fish to discuss map sources for an upcoming painting that will highlight mule deer migrations in the Cody area. It was a road trip filled with wonder, weather, wild animals, art, emptiness…and a lot of road construction!
Near the end of the year, I submitted a license plate design for the Montana Big Game and Wildlife Highway Crossings License Plate Artwork Contest. Though my design was not chosen as the winner, I still love my colorful and whimsical entry, and it seemed to sum up 2025 perfectly.
