Bow Hunter

Additional Information

Provenance:
The Mark Chapman Estate, Cat Spring, TX

E. Martin Hennings painted many subjects throughout his 50-year career, but two of the artist’s long-running design motifs were aspen and cottonwood trees, which he painted into exquisite works from all around Northern New Mexico. A huge portion of his paintings, including numerous major masterpieces, show Native American subjects riding through labyrinths of white trunks, their autumn canopies filling the scene with golden light. In Bow Hunter, the subject is amid thick vegetation calmly pulling a bowstring back. He seems trapped behind bars of organic matter, but his expression is calm and sure, which seems to indicate that he’s locked onto a target and is just seconds away from a certain kill.

“Landscape plays so important a part of my work, and subjects of sage, mountain and sky. Nothing thrills me more, when in the fall, the aspen and cottonwoods are in color and with the sunlight playing across them—all the poetry and drama, all the moods and changes of nature are there to inspire one to greater accomplishment from year to year,” Hennings wrote in his notes. “In figure subjects I think I find my greatest inspiration—subjects which you have grown to know from experience and subjects which the imagination brings forth…A painting is a great adventure—thinking over a subject, making all sorts of pencil sketches, designing, comparing, organizing, planning its color, the lighting, until you are sure it has everything you want for a strong and effective painting—then you go to work on your canvas, with your models, and this will call for all the ability and craftsmanship which the years of work have given you, plus all the special effort you are capable of in order to have a consummative and significant piece of art realized.”

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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