Back Then (horses and sledge)

I live in Minnesota now, and before the Europeans arrived, the North Woods - Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota - were covered by both soft and hard woods. It didn't take too long for the plains and hills to be denuded, the logs shipped down the St Croix and Mississippi, and here we are today.

This is a painting of a yesterday. horses and sledge. I will never see those forested hills, nor those who eliminated them. But I can paint their absence. Which is why there are no people in the painting. Only animals, dumb, and in silence.