The Bridger’s
The Bridger Mountain Range, oil on canvas, 2025
I moved to Montana in the spring of 2022. I still remember the first time I saw the Bridger Mountain Range. They seemed to emerge straight from the ground, rising abruptly from what, i saw back then as an expanse of flat land. Growing up in Washington, mountains were no stranger to me. Everywhere I looked there were rolling hills, dense forests, distant peaks, and nearby ridges. The landscape felt layered, with hardly a flat stretch in sight. Trees and mountains framed the sky for most of my life, and up until I came to Montana I hadn’t realized just how expansive the sky could feel.
Washington’s Rolling Mountains and Hills.
The mountains here in Montana are drier and more exposed than those I had known in Washington. Although they seemed smaller at first, I realized that was an illusion of perspective. In Montana, you often begin at a much higher elevation, already being among the foothills or in the alpine, so the mountain ranges reveal themselves as bold, isolated peaks. It feels as though you are in the alpine and the mountain ranges are simply peaks, rather than full mountains. In Washington, you are typically much closer to sea level. While the mountains reach similar elevations, they are preceded by layers of rolling hills, forests and smaller ridges that soften and partially obscure their forms. Rarely do you encounter the kind of uninterrupted mountain face that defines the Bridger Range.
The Bridger Mountain Range, oil on canvas, 2025
I knew I wanted to paint the Bridger’s. Living in Bozeman, I see them constantly, and over time, I found myself captivated by the way they transform throughout the day and across the seasons. Light reshapes them hour by hour, changing their colors, revealing new textures, and reminding me that even a familiar landscape is never truly the same twice.
This painting was a commission I was hired to create. I was overjoyed to be able to paint the mountains I see everyday as a gift for a friend of mine in college. I had a lot of fun layering in the snow and adding dashes yellow and orange to capture the fading sunlight against the mountainside. It was fun to push the color and use such saturated pigments in a natural way. Behind the dark gray clouds peeks the blue sky, creating intense depth in the sky, it feels as though the storm clouds rolled in fast, nearly blocking out all the light. Oranges and browns flow across the mountainside and rolling hills with touches of green and blues hidden in the shade of the valleys.
Photograph of the Bridger Mountain Range
