The core of Modern Huntsman’s exploration of the outdoors is our creative community, and we’re especially proud of the collaborations between fine artists that have come out of our team’s effort. This week, we released our Limited Edition Cover of Volume Five, which features original artwork by Spanish watercolorist Dani Verges based on a photo taken by Modern Huntsman’s Creative Advisor, Chris Douglas.
Between Chris’s home ground in Montana and Dani’s studio in Barcelona, the two artists’ partnership illuminates the cowboy lifestyle of the American West in a truly incomparable way. Writing Editor Jack Evans recently talked through Chris and Dani’s collaboration, creative process and the fascination with the wilderness:
Dani Vergés
JE: Dani, we were very excited to be introduced to your work through Chris, our Creative Advisor. It’s amazing how well your illustrations can transport us to the perspective and world-experience of ranching and hunting. Why are you artistically pulled towards that way of life?
DV: A few years ago, I spent some time on ranches in Colorado, and it was strange because it was so different from Spain — so fewer people, such a grander landscape — and yet I felt like I had arrived home there. The lifestyle of working on the land, as a cowboy, was full of these contradictions of peace and wildness, quietude and harshness, and always hard work. It was so beautiful to me and so important — so I want my drawings to express all this because I think these are the things that people need to be able to feel and appreciate right now. It was great to bring this work to Modern Huntsman because I love the magazine! I’ve given it to friends here who have never had a chance to understand hunting, so they were against it. I just told them: “Read it.” And they
