Having The Usual at the Busy Bee Cafe

Oil painting of the Busy Bee Cafe located in Buffalo, Wyoming. Cafe is backlit with sun light coming thru the space between buildings lighting a mural of the burning wagon wheel. Sometimes a painting comes with a good story. This one comes from bestselling novelist Craig Johnson’s series of stories and Netflix series Longmire. Buffalo served as the basis for the local described by Johnson. The Busy Bee figures prominently in the series. I had stopped in the town and was exited by the historic location and let it inspire my take on the cafe. Books create images and it’s exciting to travel mentally vs physically in a location. I had to balance creativity and personal experience with this work. The strong contrast between the cafe in shadow and the wagon wheel mural across the way excited me. I especially enjoyed creating the reflections in the cafe windows of the sunlit buildings across the street making them appear as abstract paintings. There is also a portrait of the Sheriff on the beer advertisement poster in the cafe doorway. There’s just a really nice balance in this painting between light and shadow and details on the scene itself. And if Dali can have a burning giraffe I can have my burning wagon wheel, I decided…