"Distant Drums" was a challenging painting for me. (I love challenges!) I wanted to play with the warm shadows cast on the soft gray background to give a very 3-dimensional quality and bring life to all the beautifully beaded pieces that I selected for this composition. I wanted the colorful beadwork of the Plains Indian moccasins, the strike-a-light bag, and drum beater with the horsehair “tail” to surround the aged character of the stretched rawhide drum.