Description
Artist: Snow Mack
"Spirits of the West"
Acrylic on Panel, 8" x 10" 2024
"Spirits of the West" revisits the first painting I sold in a gallery in Encino, California, in 1988.
The imagery for the painting, titled "Snapshot, Dream Vision", came from a vivid dream after I learned of my paternal grandmother's passing. Grandmother, Montana Moss Snow, died one month before her one-hundredth birthday, in October 1988. Her birthday is All Souls Day, November 1st. In the dream, we were riding together in the desert surrounded by spirits. We rode to a stream, she laid to rest in the stream and I watched as the current carried her bones down the stream. The passage of time seemed like thousands of years. The message I received from the dream is we all have a spirit protector guiding us through our lives.
In 2005, my husband was a Visual Effects Supervisor on Ghost Rider, starring Nic Cage. I worked on the film as well, designing and painting the digital matte paintings for the desert ride scenes. It's only recently, as I was working on "Spirits of the West", that I see a connection in this imagery. Perhaps the painting from 1988 was a premonition, it was my first painting with a skeleton and spirits from alternate dimensions.