Painting like crazy lately!

Robert and I were out taking photos one day near Gibson Dam. The mountain sheep rams were below us, near the river. I was peeking over the edge at them, taking photos of them from above, when they decided to climb the cliff and come up to where we were.

Most of the rams, as they walked by me, kind of hurried on by, this one stopped to look at me as I was looking at him.  I took several photos of him.

I liked the intelligence and curiosity I saw shining from his eyes.

I had to paint him!

Bucky

 And once there was a horse named Bucky who loved the snow and the winds of winter. The other horses on the ranch called him crazy because he was running and bucking his way through cold weather!An early fall blizzard came. The cattle were high on the mountain on fall pasture.The rancher knew he needed his toughest winter horse to bring the cattle from the forests where they held up-not wanting to face the storm.

Bucky and the rancher headed up the mountain and through the long cold day-they moved cattle down lower and lower toward the ranch and good piles of hay. It grew dark but Bucky didn't lose his way. He brought the rancher and his cattle home.
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Way way back when my mom was young, my grandfather's sister and her husband wanted a ranch. They worked in Billings, Mt at the telegraph office, saved every dime they had. When they had enough to buy another homestead, they'd send my grandfather the money and he'd go buy them some more land.Pretty soon they had land and cattle on the mountain, but they still lived in town. My grandfather went to their place and looked after their cattle and his own.A blizzard came, and there was no other way to get to the cattle at the other ranch, so my grandfather rode on his horse Bjorken, who was an Arabian stud, at that time, my grandfather wanted to raise Arabians. Bjorken was the start of his herd.He and the horse made it to the cattle and got them fed, but on the way home they almost froze to death. The horse saved my grandfather's life.
And that is a true story!
You can maybe see why I like stories, I grew up on them....

"Stars in His Eyes"

One night I went out into the pasture to visit my horse. As I came over the ridge, I heard him talking and more surprising to me-I knew what he was saying. He was talking to the moon and this is what he said,"I want you to start keeping your darn stars in the sky! You let them run wild and they fall on me! This one landed on my eye!" (He doesn't seem to like having stars in his eyes?)The moon replied,"I don't know why you are complaining-they don't hurt."

"I know they don't hurt," the horse spoke disgustedly. "But they annoy me!"So the moon said, "I'm sorry-it's something in the cosmos-they're very silly tonight. Why I have one with me now, trying to talk some sense into his head-trying to get him to behave himself. I can't spank them you know, the star police would be after me in a minute!!I walked closer to my horse. He saw me and stopped talking. The moon went silent and turned his back on us."If you will permit me...." I reached up and pulled the star from my horse's forehead. I pulled back my arm and threw the star like a frisbee-back into the sky where he belonged.My horse looked at me in star-struck wonder! He galloped round the field-grabbing fallen stars with his teeth-tossing them higher and higher!The stars shook star dust trails as they flew back into the sky. It became hard to know, which stars were falling and which were rising!I had the time of my life and so did my horse! The man in the moon nearly fell from the sky with laughing! And the stars...oh you should have seen them-glowing and happy in their stardust sky.
copyright Donna Ridgway 2015

I guess you can tell by now, when I create my "fantasy" horses, they tell me stories! I share them with you here, but please remember they are my own copyrighted work, the stories and the paintings.

Donna