There Was a Time
1997-1998
oil, 48" x 144"

Intrigued by the massive wildebeest migration in Africa, I began to imagine what the North American buffalo looked like in migration in the early 1800s when they numbered close to sixty million. I read the diaries of Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Lewis’ observations of the buffalo, and then followed part of their route in order to find the best location to place the buffalo herd in my painting. About thirty miles south of Bismarck, North Dakota, I found what I wanted.