The Deserters by Ron Crooks

(1925-2006 ) Oil on board; 12" x 26". Two soldiers hiding from a search party. From the collection of Glenn Hayes. Hayes provided Crooks with a narrative and comissioned the painting. Ron painted about 200 oils of Western scenes a year. "I picked Western subjects because they let the artist use landscape, people, storytelling…I think the peak in art was the French Impressionist," he observes. "It is a looseness in style and the paintings that border abstract. I hope my style goes that way. My feeling is that if an artist lives to be 200, he become an abstract painter, boiling down all he wants to interpret into his abstract essence. Basically, all painting is abstract. A good painting is a good abstraction."