“The inspiration — very simply — came from my love for the prairie. I am trying to distill in abstract form the feeling of fields of prairie grass and wind. I’ve always been attracted to the color gold. As a young kid, I hoarded gold crayons — I thought my gold drawings precious, automatically infused with value. I distinctly remember my geologist father, a modern-day prospector, showing me flecks of gold as we looked at a drill core under a stereo microscope; I could sense his excitement. And, after a thousand trips on Highway 14 between Rapid City and Pierre over the past 40 years, I never tire of the beauty of miles of golden prairie.”