PLEASANT CREEK RANCH

"Technicolor Dreams of the Ol’ West Abandoned"

The Pleasant Creek homestead was once a working ranch with a wooden slab-sided ranch home, barns of hewn-cut logs, an external icehouse, orchards, and cattle pastures with wood fences and twisted wire.  Here, the cottonwood leaves turn in the sunlight, the creek water is plentiful, and the shadows are long, even in summer. With my camera, I wanted to portray the deteriorating structures, the weathered tools, the worn paths, and the faint echoes of men at work.  The romance of the ‘Old West’ appears through the fallen timbers of the ranch house, the slipping fence lines, and the barns that are now in an advanced state of decay. Pleasant Creek is perhaps the quintessential stage of a shared American landscape of brushlands, distant mountains, and a moody light that never fails to dramatize the skies and outbuildings.

As I captured the decaying wooden structures, red rock mountains, terracotta canyons, and cloud-crowded skies, I couldn't help but be reminded of the technicolor hues of the Ol’ West cinema titles and the romantic scripts of rugged individualism. As an artist, I was drawn to this cinematic technicolor pallet as well as the poignant mood of abandoned dreams. This collection of fine art prints is a deep plunge into the remarkable story of the past, the simple but hard life of these early settlers, standing in stark contrast to the advanced structural decay that now engulfs these landscapes.