Red Lodge Drawings
The Red Lodge Drawings series was inspired by my father, Kemp Wilson (1939 - 2008) and our family home of Montana.
Red Lodge Drawing #3, gouache, quilling (paper craft), 22" x 30," 2011
Red Lodge Drawings
Growing up in Montana, I was surrounded by the iconography of the American West, and specifically that of the cowboy. Images of rugged men with their code of stoic endurance, self-reliance, loyalty, courage, and camaraderie, on horseback riding across the plains, wrangling cattle and spitting chew were everywhere - from the paintings of Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington to the landscape itself. My Dad's Red Lodge home also became an extension of the majesty and brutality of the West with walls and floors lined with the skins and taxidermy heads of deer, bear, elk, and moose. My father was a hunter and I admired that he would skin, gut, and butcher the game he would be eating for the year.
However, what I remember being the most drawn to were the accouterments of the cowboy - the beautiful ornamentation and floral designs that adorned their trappings and presented such a delicate contrast to the rough and tough image of the wrangler.
