Sometimes, I paint landscapes which are inspired by, but not true to, actual scenes from Montana. I often - but not always - paint these in a ‘looser’ style than when painting an actual scene. Scroll down and take a look! Click on the images to see them in isolation in their entirety.

Above: “What the Sweetgrass Remembers - an Allegory of Fall[ing]” (or “Rita” - A Fantasy of Whitetails and Unrequited Love); oil on canvas; 44.5” w x 67.5”, 1998, 2006, and 2025, Galen ‘Mac’ McAllister. ($=enquire)

I completed this painting in 1998, decided that I didn’t like it, and started revising it that late that year. My non-art career became incredibly busy about that same time, so I never completed the painting… it just gathered dust. In about 2006, I had a week-long opportunity to work on it again… but there’s only so much revision you can do in a week, so once again it was incomplete and began gathering dust. When we moved into our present home, this painting occupied a downstairs hallway for years. Walking past it every day, my wife decided that the doe should be named “Rita”…

In July of 2025, I had the opportunity of a short residency at Omerta Arts in which to complete all the revisions - thus the date “1998 + 2025”. This painting is very large (three feet 8.5 inches by five feet 7.5 inches, or 1.13m x 1.72m ) and even larger with its frame; I tried to make it detailed enough to fascinate close-up while being coherent as a whole composition when viewed from a distance… did I succeed?

Below, a detail…

(below) Another detail from “Rita”… I added in a couple of ‘easter eggs’ for those with enough time to study the painting; this is one.

Below: Conifers in the Mist, oil on canvas, 12” w x 36” h, Galen ‘Mac’ McAllister, 2025 ($200 unframed).

Another painting completed during my short July residency at Omerta. Done fairly loosely in style, but I think it successfully evokes the feeling of being in the high hills on a misty day…

Hills in Morning Fog, oil on canvas, 36”w x 12” h, Galen ‘Mac’ McAllister 2025 ($200 unframed)

This piece is a ‘riff’ from one I painted many many years ago, which in turn was loosely based on seeing early morning fog one spring in the Bridger foothils & Story Hills of Bozeman MT. I was having early morning coffee at the Apple Tree restaurant’s counter (which hasn’t existed for decades now) when I saw low fog enveloping the hills to the east…

“Autumn Aspens”, oil on stretched canvas, 19” w x 39 & 3/8” h, Galen McAllister 2025. Second place, oil painting, 2025 Montana VA Creative Arts Festival. A couple of things I found interesting about making this large painting — there is no pure white anywhere, yet the trunks appear white…. and many of the ‘leaves’ are not connected to any ‘branches’, yet the eye doesn’t mind at all. One of my art instructors, Mr. Seth Roby, would always remind us that it’s usually enough to suggest the details instead of actually painting them all in — the mind’s eye will fill in the rest. (framed, $550)