From Anonymous Appreciation to Personal Invitation

A quick follow up to the last post about a vibrant painting by a local artist hanging at the Pioneers Museum in downtown Colorado Springs.

I brought the post to the attention of the artist, Tracy Felix.  We had a short email exchange in which he shared a few additional images and gave me insight into his creative and production processes.

In some cases he works from his own photographs, as well as postcards and photos from others.  In other cases he works strictly from imagination, informed by decades of hiking, skiing and exploring our area.

Here is an example of the former, a new painting from a recent trip to Durango:

The Grenadier Range from Molas Lake by Tracy Felix

Here’s an example of the latter, an imagined scene generated from the general idea or concept of “northern New Mexico”:

The point of this post: rather than simply enjoying a painting at a local treasure of a museum, I decided to shoot a couple photos and write a brief piece about it.  From that limited initiative, I received more insight into the person and the process behind the images, images of three additional paintings not in the online gallery, information about a current showing of work by him and his wife, Sushe, and a standing, informal invitation to the Felix’s home and studio.  I think that’s wonderful.

Here’s the third image I received; it’s inspired by the La Plata mountains in the San Juan range near Durango:

La Platas by Tracy Felix

Here’s a Denver Post feature from July 2008 about Tracy and Sushe Felix.