Over the years I have discovered one great truth about painting. Ideas or subjects, whatever you want to call them, are afraid of chairs. I have never had a painting subject come to me when I was in a chair. They always seem to come along when I am outdoors; riding, sitting by the campfire, playing poker on a blanket or cursing rocks and hard ground in a bedroll.

So it isn't strange that the idea for "Approaching Storm" came to me when I was helping to move a bunch of Longhorns in south Texas.

The cowboys could see the storm off in the distance and sense that the cattle were getting "antsy." The riders were anxious to get the move finished and close the corral gates on those Longhorns. I remembered all the paintings of stormy stampedes I'd seen. I even remembered reading in some old book that the lightning bounced from horn to horn over a herd of stampeding cattle.

We got them secured in time, though. When I started to paint the picture I realized that the anticipation of a storm and stampede was much more dramatic and frightening than the actual event. That's the scene I painted - threatening black clouds, an apprehensive cowboy looking back, nervous cows and tense riders.

- Melvin C. Warren