Roping a Grizzly 1903

Charles M. Russell made this watercolor called "Roping a Grizzly". The artist is going after it with loose washes of sandy and icy blues and browns. You can feel the chase and it must have been so exciting to make this painting and capture a snippet of this moment in time. The way the riders are chasing the bear evokes artists like Delacroix and Gericault, who showed people and animals in extreme distress with all their might. With a few flicks of the wrist, the artist seems to have captured the sensation of flying across a huge open landscape. I wonder if he used a tiny brush, because sometimes I get a great feeling of freedom when I work small, even though that sounds counter intuitive. The artist is going for it and using the medium to its full potential. Artists are always in conversation, aren't they? We are inspired by the world around us and by each other. We carry on making new marks!