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Local artist, Dan Young, doesn’t miss a sunrise or sunset, even (especially) in the cold of winter. A long-time resident of Silt, Colorado, Dan Young’s plein air impressions often depict beloved locations and pastimes of the West. Over the years Young has mastered the challenges posed by painting on location regardless of the season and has earned a reputation as one of Colorado’s premier landscape artists. From his plein air winter scenes dotted with fences, structures, or moonlight on irrigated fields, to the summer fly fishermen and towering mountain peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Dan often captures the boundaries where nature meets man.
“I’ve been painting for years and it still inspires me,” reflects Young in a conversation we had earlier this week. “Every one is different and every time I see something different. Each painting is inspired by a specific sunset. Each painting is a study…”
When we had this conversation, Dan was out in the field, walking the same path as the day before. He was out “gathering information” – making sketches, taking notes, observing, “designing in [his] head.” The last major storm lasted 7-days and gave him an idea – “grey, moody, winter pieces” – and he has been running at it full-bore, exploring the composition, the colors, the values, to the tune of 30 paintings, until he gets it right. Colorado is, after all, known for its sunshine.
The concept, he explains, is to explore the “huge, visual impact of strong, simple, abstract patterns” provided by the simplicity of a winter landscape while “balancing visual impact with emotional impact.”
Young delivered nearly a dozen of these paintings inspired by this winter storm, by this concept, by these sunrises and sunsets. You may see all available works by Dan Young here, as well as a gallery full of snowscapes in our current exhibition: The Colors of Snow.
