This piece began in 2020 when I made my first visit to the Whitewater Draw near Tombstone Arizona to see the winter gathering of Sandhill Cranes. It was my first experience seeing these birds in such numbers, and it was very memorable, not just for the birds, but for the overall atmosphere of the place. It was an overcast, misty morning, which muted the colors and gave everything an elegant, reductive look, like you might expect of a Japanese brush painting.

Anyone who follows my work knows that I typically remove my animal subjects from their natural habitats, choosing instead to highlight the aspects I find most important within a non-objective context, often involving stylization and abstraction. I have also, however, always held the conviction that every painting is a unique set of problems to be solved, and that artists who force subjects they are inspired to paint into a pre-established stylistic mold are not only doing a disservice to their subjects, but to their own ability to grow as artists. I knew that, regardless of my stylistic norms, I could not remove these birds from the habitat I found just as inspiring as the birds themselves, not if I wanted to honor my inspiration. I needed to paint a wildlife scene, something I hadn’t done in over twenty years, a painting having more in common with my early work inspired by Robert Bateman and John Seerey-Lester than anything most of my current audience would recognize.

A compositional idea, and then a full-scale value study, came together quickly, but everything after that hit speed bumps. Initially I tried to paint the scene using my usual impasto approach (building up layers of paint and sanding down) but it became clear that the technique simply wasn’t suited to my goals, so I started over, sanding off my work thus far and re-priming the cradled board. Then for several years ensued a comic game of starts and stops. It felt like every time I was ready to get a good start on “Haven,” a hard deadline came up that required me to put it aside. Finally in 2025 I resolved that this painting would get finished. Through all the false starts, my enthusiasm for this piece never waned, but something important did happen in the background. I began to drift away from my impasto approach in favor of a more direct painting method. Ultimately, this piece finally came together in a period of flux, during which I was- and still am- trying to figure out a new direction for my work. In addition to being a fine piece with which I am very pleased, “Haven” was a proof of concept, an affirmation that I could paint directly on board, with no abstraction, no stylization, and none of my typical technique, and still create a piece that feels fresh, modern, and reads as an Andrew Denman.

Whether this piece will inspire that new direction or prove to be a particularly memorable one-off, only time will tell, but I am excited to find out.