How do you tell a story in a landscape?

"Good landscape artists don't just paint the land! They look for stories to be told. Consider my painting, Westward the Star of Empire Takes its Way—Near Council Bluffs, Iowa. Does that title sound familiar? It recalls that famous work hanging in the American Capitol, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.

"Leutze tells a story of heroic settlement of the American West, with Daniel Boone leading the conestoga wagons across the continent. My painting tells a different story. I challenge those beliefs about progress and technology. Will settlement tame or crush the wilderness? Will it expand or extinguish that American spirit which my countrymen so cherish?

"To tell such a story for the eyes, I choose each object and render it carefully. Everything should look realistic, but I arrange things to suit myself. My painting is filled with symbolic meaning.

"Point to different parts of my painting and I will tell you about the symbols I used.

Move your mouse over the painting to learn about the symbols.

"I see how you use symbolism to tell a story within a landscape painting. But I'm amazed by the composition—it looks like the train is going to run us over! "

"So how do you make your landscape look so deep!"