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The following excerpt is taking from "Wild Beasts: Expressionist Color & Form," by Marcia Preston in Wildlife Art, November/December 1999. Alison's painting After the Dawn is fetured on the cover.

Etched in Time
"The image of a buffalo is powerful, but the soul of a buffalo is divine," says Colorado artist Alison Dearborn. Rieder believes in the connectedness of all life — past, present and future. Her paintings are visual representations of passing time and of time eternal.

Rieder works to convey this feeling through vivid, earthy colors and pictographs inspired by the ancient cave drawings of France. The Native Ameri-can flavor of her work comes from extensive travel and study in the American Southwest.

"Everyone knows what these animals look like," Rieder says, "but I want to show what they feel like: what meaning they have in nature and what meaning they hold for us, as the ascendants of the people who climbed into caves thousands of years ago to paint their world on rock."

By applying thin layers of translucent acrylic, much like a watercolorist, Rieder allows background to permeate the subjects. She builds organic textures to resemble the actual look of animals etched in stone. "I strive to create a luminescence in the figures," Rieder says. "I use whichever colors move me, as well as selecting color to reflect the spirit of the animals. My main directive when I paint is to capture the essence of the animals with an economy of line and lucid color. I think it makes for a dynamic painting, as opposed to something I would see in nature.

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