Memories

Memories
20” x 16”
Parsons 2026

This painting is of the original Guardipee house out on Two Medicine Ranch. It’s my first painting I’ve completed in my new home with Corrina.

I’ve been told that when Corrina was a little girl, she would come out to the country and stay here with her cousin Lea. To most people driving by, it would just look like an old prairie house slowly being reclaimed by the grass. But like so many places on the reservation, the walls hold stories.

Inside, there is a buffalo mural painted by Howard Pepion. In the entryway, there are still old jeans hanging on a clothesline, as if someone stepped out for a moment and never came back. The house has weathered decades of Montana winters, summer storms, and prairie winds, yet it remains standing.

As I painted it, I kept thinking about how places like this become anchors for memory. The people change. The generations pass. Children grow up and leave. But sometimes a house remains, quietly holding the stories of everyone who once called it home.

The moon rising over the mountains felt right for this piece. The mountains are still there. The house is still there. And the memories are still there.

Oil on canvas.