Since my first exposure to the Plains 45 years ago, I have imagined the sea flowing over this land – the waves, massive and powerful, stretching in all directions for millions of years, pounding over a seabed of silt and rocks. I have looked out over these vast open spaces and seen the Sea, a sea that 100 million years ago stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Rockies to east of the Mississippi River.
About the Artist
The Western Interior Seaway, an ancient inland sea, was created when a tectonic plate subducted under another, causing a depression. This depression and the high sea levels at that time allowed waters to flow in from the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean. Then, 50 million years ago, an uplift hoisted sandstone and shale above sea level, and the low-lying basins gradually subsided. The Western Interior Seaway retreated south towards the Gulf of Mexico. The land became dry.
Alan Paine Radebaugh has been painting the strata and flora of this region since 2008. He has driven many one- and two-lane roads winding through the Plains. Driving, walking, drawing, and photographing for weeks on the road, Radebaugh returns to his studio in New Mexico to paint. He paints not only the strata and flora of today’s Plains but also his awe of and fascination with the history of 100 million years.
Paintings from this project, Ghost of Sea, meld images from one place with those from another to create an overall impression of the Plains – with a ghost-like feel of the ancient seas. Images from Black Kettle National Grassland are shuffled in Radebaugh’s memory and imagination with images from Oglala National Grassland. Images of the headwaters of the Missouri mingle with those of the headwaters of the Athabasca. The paintings, thus, reflect an impression of the Plains rather than document a particular site.
