4/22/25 ano kato 32×36” oil on portrait linen, as she looked following this morning’s drawing
the miracle, 32×36”, as she looked following this afternoon’s white-over & scraping
1:55 PM: i resumed work on my two most recent paintings, going back and forth between the two so as not to get stuck on one or the other. following my morning investigation of the tsaatan, a Turkic community of nomadic reindeer herders in northern Mongolia, i was inspired to white-over the miracle and then scrape into it with sweeping, calligraphic strokes using one of my palette knives.
4/22/25 ano kato: i made a drawing in oil of a tsaatan woman mounted on her reindeer directly over the colored pencil drawings, with two of the figures enveloped in blue. where i brought both these paintings could easily be left as is…..we’ll see.
i’m stopping here for the day. as mikela often asks me: “did the same artist make both of these paintings??”
The Tsaatan, also known as the Dukha, are a Turkic community of nomadic reindeer herders in northern Mongolia, specifically in the Khovsgol Province near the Siberian border. They are the last remaining reindeer herders in the world and are known for their traditional lifestyle deeply intertwined with reindeer domestication.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE9I-FyBpZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeMcBB9wCPE