Photograph Mark Walker Smith When I was growing up in Utah we used to go up to Sherman Bennett's Christmas tree farm every December to pick out a tree for our house. We always went at night. Although I was excited to pick out a tree, I was even more excited to spot the wild pigs. They were so enormous they didn't even seem real. Luckily they were behind a fence, although the sight of them was still frightening. I always wanted to paint this memory, so this December I finally did. I was fortuitously prompted by my brother's photograph (markwalkersmith.com) taken at night from the hills above Alpine.
Christmas Tree Farm - Sally K. Smith The Christmas Tree Farm is painted like a stage with myself and the giant pigs in the foreground. The Christmas trees loom large and Alpine lies in the backdrop, tapering off into the valley with traces of the smoke and fire rising from Geneva Steel near the lake. Some of the bare trees with their red branches dance ambiguously between the foreground and the background, tying both together. The dark clouds hang like a curtain above the stage where I stand in my pink coat, watching the wild pigs in my winter drama.
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