Sage Creek
Original oil on canvas, palette knife
$5,000 — Original | $100 — Fine Art Print

Titan was born in the Badlands and has carried me through them for years — past wild bison herds, across unstable ground, through every kind of weather this country produces. He does not spook easily, and in all our years riding together, he had never once refused a trail.

Until one early, eerie morning at Sage Creek.

He stopped. Not startled, not bolting — simply stopped, and would not go further. I dismounted and led him forward on foot, trusting an instinct sharper than anything I could see for myself. A few steps on, I found what he already seemed to know was there: a bleached skull, half-sunk into the red earth, alone in the stillness.

I have chosen not to resolve what stopped him that morning. Whatever it was, it felt less like fear than respect — as though he understood something about that ground before I did.

The painting is built on three colors alone: red for the life we live, black for the dying, white for what remains. Worked entirely with a palette knife — no brush, no blending, no correction — because nothing else could carry the true grit of that terrain, or the hard, weathered edges of bone. It was made the way the moment demanded: direct, unhesitating, straight from encounter to canvas.

Sage Creek is ground I know intimately, ridden countless times among the living herd. This painting holds the other end of that same story — not the bison I have ridden beside for years, but what eventually remains of any of us, found by a horse who knew enough to stop, and a rider who knew enough to listen.

One original. Limited fine art prints available.