Laura Cunningham Art and Nature

My paleoart images of the White River Badlands fossil beds reconstructions of sabertooth cats, three-toed horses, and titanotheres has just been published in the beautiful book The White River Badlands: Geology and Paleontology , by Rachel Benton, Dennis Terry Jr., Emmett Evanoff, and H. Gregory McDonald, Indaian University Press (Bloomington & Indianapolis) 2015.  I just received a copy in the mail, and it is a richly designed book full of the latest research on the 30-35 million-year-old fossil beds of South Dakota. See my earlier post on 6/5/16 about how I painted these mural images for the museum.

I am experimenting with book covers for my upcoming guide to oil painting (see earlier posts), and here is one idea. It is a large oil on panel painting of a rare melanistic mountain lion, with a deep black color, in a desert canyon. I first heard reports of a black mountain lion by a friend who saw one near Tilden Regional Park in back of the Oakland-Berkeley hills, Contra Costa County, CA. Black mountain lions are apparently somewhat more common in South America. Rare Black Mountain Lion, 28 x 36 inches, Oil on panel, 1997.