The name of the painting is a play on the history behind the boots and spurs in the piece. I acquired both of these items several years ago at the Old West Show in Arizona. The spurs are beautiful and elaborately hand-tooled works from the Amozoc de Mota region of Mexico (outside Puebla, Mexico). The boots are very old soldier's boots (close to 100 yrs old). I oiled them repeatedly with mink oil after purchasing to bring them back from the dead...leather can really dry out after a century :) If you received my Christmas card and look closely, you'll notice that 3 of my 4 characters are actually wearing these boots (doesn't hurt when my antique reference materials also happen to be my size). If you want one of these cards and didn't receive one this year - email me your mailing address and I'll add you to the foolish tradition.
I took some creative license with the background on this piece. I’ve played a lot with sunlight and shadows in recent works, but this was the first one I did utilizing moonlight. The texture and tone of the wall was entirely a figment of my imagination as my reference point was a white plaster backdrop, but it came out very nicely. I wanted it to have a "moodier" feel and color palette to the background, which I think comes across.
