Return of Summer

Winner of the Prix De West, the highest prize of the National Academy of Western Art.

The location of the painting is the area just east of the Rocky Mountains in Montana. It’s call the Rocky Mountain front — where the plains meet the mountains. This is early summer when the cloud shadows drift across the prairies where the green grass has returned. Here the grasses are flowering but there’s still snow on the peaks. The prairie is very colorful with all kinds of flowers. The renewed plant life, the crisp atmosphere and the lingering snow in the high country certainly lifts one’s spirit.