When Shadows Hint Death 1915

Charles M. Russell made this oil painting, "When Shadows Hint Death" to evoke a sense of foreboding in a Western landscape. Russell isn’t afraid of blending his colors to create a seamless gradient, like the way the sky shifts from light yellow to orange to a deep purple. This reminds me that artmaking is about seeing, but also feeling the movement of change. Check out the foreground, Russell gives you a real sense of the texture of the rough terrain. I like the broken brushstrokes in the grass. Notice how he uses thicker paint to depict the rocky cliff, giving it a tactile quality that contrasts with the smooth, atmospheric rendering of the canyon in the background. The way he’s captured the light hitting the edges of the rocks makes them feel really present. You might think about other painters like Frederic Remington, who also brought the American West to life. These painters weren't just showing us a picture, they were sharing their own experience of a landscape. There's a lot of room to imagine what's happening, to be more than one thing.