Paint the Cowtown Art Show

Invitation to our show.

       This Thursday is the reception for the Paint the Cowtown Art Show at the Fort Worth Central Library in beautiful downtown Fort Worth on 500 West Third Street. This show features the plein air paintings from 12 North Texas artists - Robbie Clemmer,Tosca Engisch, Sabine Higgins, Olivette Hubler, Sheri Jones, Steve Miller, Linda Popple, T.K. Riddle, Dan Spangler, Sara Ward, Beatriz Welch, and myself. Our reception is from 6:00 to 8:00. I hope you will be able to join us.
Doug

Fort Worth - Where The West Begins

My painting that was accepted into the Plein Air Southwestern Salon.

First I have some great news. I entered the Outdoor Painters Society's Plein Air Southwestern Salon Show and I had the above painting accepted into it. This painting is a view of the rose garden's fountain in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. This is a tough show to get into. This year the juror and judge is John Budicin. I cannot even express how honored I am to have a painting in the Salon. The show will be in April in  Dallas at the Southwest Gallery.

Fort Worth Mayor, Betsy Price

This morning I got up and did a bit of painting and then went to one of Fort Worth's great Western traditions, the annual Stock Show and Rodeo Parade. I think this is the largest all horse and horse drawn vehicle parade in the world. After almost two hours of horses, mules, donkeys, and burros, you start to wonder if any equines are left in Texas, the surrounding states and Mexico..

The Six Flags of Texas

It really is a very colorful and interesting event. The mayor,city council, and other state and local officials all participate as do many of our wealthiest and most prominent citizens. Our mounted Fort Worth Police officers and many of the surrounding sheriff's posses ride in the event.


One of the stage coaches.

  As I said there are no motorized vehicles but there are many stage coaches, wagons, carriages, and buggies.The big draft horses are some of my favorites. This year there were several large groups from Mexico. The women wore beautiful local costumes and rode sidesaddle, The men wore the traditional clothing of the vaquero including large sombreros.

TCU's marching band

 My university, TCU's marching band participated as did many local high school bands, Scottish pipers, and a band from Zacatecas, Mexico. They were all on foot, but the Texas Girls' Choir rode in wagons. (They rode along singing.)

U.S. cavalry

A Christian riding group.

Confederate Cavalry

 There are a wide variety of clubs and groups that ride in the event including churches and historical groups and reenactors. There are cowboys, vaqueros, U.S. Cavalry, Buffalo Soldiers, and Confederate Cavalry but I only saw one Indian and he was riding in a wagon.

Beverly riding in the parade.

 My very dear friend Beverly Fletcher rode in the parade with a group from the Benbrook riding stable. She used to ride a great deal and I believe she was a barrel racer. I think it is terrific that she is riding again.

Me sculpting in front of the mountain lions enclosure.

 After the parade I went to the Fort Worth Zoo to work on my mountain lion. The mountain llon, or panther, is one of the symbols of Fort Worth and one of Fort Worth's nicknames was Panther City. In the 1800's a panther was spotted in Fort Worth. Dallas, always the rival of Fort Worth, quickly printed in their city's newspaper that Fort Worth was such a sleepy place that a panther was  asleep in one of its streets. Fort Worth accepted this with good humor and the fire department adopted two panther cubs as their mascots. Today the fire department and I think the police department have it on their badges.

The male mountain lion.

The mountain lions were sleeping in the sun most of the time so they were not much help to me. I did spend a while talking to their keeper. I always enjoy learning new things and I learned so much from him about the mountain lions and other big cats in the zoo.

My mountain lion in clay.

I am not quite finished with my mountain lion sculpture but I think I am pretty close. I've about reached the point where I am ready to be done with it and take it to the foundry.

The Road Not Taken

The Road not Taken
9 x 12
oil on canvas
$400

This is an unpaved service road/trail in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. I've never walked all of  it, but I like how it looks and have painted it a few times.  I just recently painted an 8 x 10 of it and decided to do a larger version of it in my newer, looser style. This one is a 9 x 12. I really am enjoying painting faster. I think I'll get a larger brush and try an even larger version in the near future.                               

The Green Garden

The Green garden
8 x 10
oil on canvas
$175

I haven't posted a finished painting in a while and I have completed several. This is the newest one. I finished painting it last week when I went back to the botanical gardens with Cecilia Robertson. It turned into a hot day but the morning was grand. I loved this scene because of all the cool shady greens, the willow and the park bench. After painting I finished up two sculptures the, crucifix and the longhorn steer and took them to the foundry. I was glad to get them out of my sculpture studio and am very much looking forward to seeing them in bronze.

Life gets in the way!



                                 A view of part of the rose garden and stonework in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.                      This part of the gardens was created as a WPA project.

The view I chose to paint today of the pond and willow.

A  photo of me painting.



Cecilia Robertson painting; she chose an unusual view, and did a great job of it.



Blair Currin, Cecilia Robertson, and Candy Clynch

A very tiny frog passing by my painting location.

Koi in the big pond.

   Today we had a smaller number of artists painting with us in the gardens than we've had over the last few weekends. Sometimes life does get in the way. Most of our friends were doing other activities. Some were working a day job, vacationing, or doing family activities. But for those of us who went out to paint in the gardens today it was a great experience. 
   There is actually a lot color in the gardens right now but most of us have been sticking to the tree line near the big pond below the rose garden. Near the pond in the shade of the trees the temperature was very pleasant  and we even had a great breeze. This was a treat as today we reached our 26th day of triple digit temperatures. We stayed until after 11, but none of us finished. I will go back tomorrow and try to finish it , then add the image to this post. After we left the shade and made it back to our cars we went to La Madeline for lunch. Another enjoyable day creating art with friends.