Trickster

This is wild California caught mid-stride — a coyote, lean and luminous, turning its gaze directly back at you with the cool confidence of a creature that belongs entirely to itself. Larry Bryson's oil brushwork crackles with urgency: dark, slashing strokes define the animal's powerful silhouette while bursts of amber, ochre, and orange fire along the chest and ears, as if the coyote carries its own inner light against the cool periwinkle ground. This is not a portrait of domesticity — it is a portrait of wildness, intelligence, and unapologetic presence. Bryson's dual training in fine art and biology gives this piece a rare authority. The proportions ring true — the long legs, the alert ears, the coiled energy of an animal perpetually ready to vanish — while the impressionist handling keeps the paint alive and gestural, never slipping into illustration. The interplay of warm and cool, dark mass and lit edge, gives the canvas a dramatic tension that holds the eye long after the first glance. For collectors drawn to California's living landscape and to paintings that carry genuine observational weight, this is a standout acquisition. Bryson's work has appeared in the Art in Embassies program and been juried into the San Diego Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of California — and pieces like this one demonstrate exactly why. Bold, ecologically grounded, and visually arresting, it is the kind of work that commands a wall and starts a conversation.