Elk are a deservedly popular subject in the American West, and nowhere is that clearer than in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Home of the National Elk Refuge, thousands of these animals descend into the refuge from the snow-clogged mountains in winter to eat the grass preserved under the bed of snow on the valley floor.

I’ve taken many sleigh rides out onto the refuge to observe the elk, and they never fail to impress me with their elaborate antlers, enormous size, and the sense of their hulking physical presence as their hot breath fogs the frigid Wyoming air. The journey they make every year, like all migrations, is a dangerous and physically taxing one, and I wanted to portray that sense of exhaustion and weight as the bull elk trudges through the snow. The dramatic side-lighting casts a long shadow of his antlers across the length of his body, a line as long and hard as his wanderings.

Mixed media studies like these are intended to be approached in a more spontaneous manner than most of my other bodies of work; as such, they are less likely to have deep conceptual underpinnings and are instead intuitive and quiet meditations on the subject matter. This is my owed to the noble Rocky Mountain Elk.