Having been raised in New Mexico, Southwest Art, Indians, cowboys, ranches, cattle and etc., are common themes when it pertains to art.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I recently awakened (precisely at 3:00 a.m.) one morning with a scene in my head depicting the “Trail of Tears”. It was a scene that was clear in my mind, almost as if stamped.

I began searching the web for any artists depictions of the event that took place in the late 1830’s and early 40’s. There were several, but nothing in the composition I envisioned. I’d not watched any movie depicting the event, nor had I read about it in more than thirty-eight years when I visited the Cherokee Village in North Carolina in 1978. So, I began to research it. Wow…is there a lot there. However, as I mentioned, no composition found that is the one I imagined.

As many of my sight visitors know, I like to do a full size drawing as a study for my watercolor paintings. Watercolors are not forgiving, so if trying to paint in somewhat of a realistic style requires some serious planning and studying, and even then it is precarious at best…at least, for me. The drawing is 20″X30″.

When I finished this drawing, I e-mailed it to my brother, Texas artist Lynn Burton for his critique on the composition. Lynn’s critique (as expected) was honest (he doesn’t pull any punches). He felt the scenery with the trees, rocks, old chief and wife sitting on the side, the valley and back mountains took the viewer’s interest away from the two main subjects of the composition, the Indians on the trail and spirit in the sky.

Now, me, personally, I like expansive scenes. Lynn, however, was speaking strictly as an art critic, which is exactly what I asked him to do. However, before I was going to put in several days re-doing the drawing, I wanted to get a feel for what he was talking about.

I sent a copy of my drawing to the printer, and then I cut the valley and far mountains out of the small picture and taped the top to the bottom. It brought the spirit closer to the Indians on the trail and did clarify the focus to the two subjects in the composition. So, this meant I could start painting the composition…or not.

When I say this, it means now I had to make another decision. Do I want to completely re-draw the new composition? It would be a lot of work, but I finally shrugged my shoulders with determination to do just that. My thinking was simple. It really wasn’t a hard decision to make. I’d drawn the original drawing on the back of an inexpensive old panel board that had been in the garage, sometimes in the attic, and always in a stack of items this pack rat just hadn’t bothered to throw away. It was probably more than twenty or thirty years old exposed to whatever elements existed. On the drawing, I’d made a multitude of errors, and the rips and eraser tears in the substrate were unpardonable for anything but a study, which is all it was originally meant to be. However, when making the drawing, I became attached to it, and often wished I’d made a good quality drawing (possibly worth selling someday). Soon I was off to the art supply store happy to be disappointed to have to do the drawing all over again. I don’t think I had to use the eraser even once on the new drawing, done very carefully on acid free drawing paper, from upper left to lower right. This drawing was smaller, 13″X24″. Nothing on the new drawing was smaller than the original. The arrangement of the composition itself made the difference in size. Since I mentioned that I tend to appreciate many expansive painting compositions, I may very well paint both compositions. I also intend to make many segmented painting studies before attempting the final paintings that within themselves may be composed in a way that they may have value. Who knows?

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Also…check the galleries above. Plus, if you are interested in visiting Lynn Burton’s art gallery just click on the following painting which will direct you to http://fineartamerica.com/ and there type in Lynn Burton in the search section.