Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 5 4 collects," Hacking says. James first became aware of the artist through Hacking's African portfolio. He invited Hacking down to St. Petersburg, Florida, where he and his wife staged art shows, and over the years he's acquired more than 30 of the Hacking's works. "When I like the artists as people, I like their work better," James says. "That doesn't mean they can't be a little quirky. Many of them are. Grant is a gentleman, but his painting stands on its own." A s a transplant in America who is smitten with its towering mountains, Hacking has demonstrated an impressive proclivity for depicting the species on this continent. "Switching from African paintings to North American paintings can be quite challenging," he says. "The differences in my pallet and even the way I apply the paint are things that I need to be conscious of. If I paint a lot of North American scenes, I start to miss the African work and vice versa." A winner of multiple art-show awards, Hacking's paintings also have been featured on the covers of numerous magazines. What he conveys is the ineffable quality of being outdoors that hunters know better than most—be it the light carried on the horizon or the soft shadows that drape a valley at dawn or dusk. There's something soothing and magnetic about his work. In Chilly Morning, Hacking portrays a mule deer buck in the broken scrublands of the West during the height of the rut. It's not just the anatomical precision of the animal that he's after but the creation of mood. "I am always thrilled by the way the light catches the mountaintops on those chilly October mornings," he says. "Hunters who rise early know the alpenglow." With Afternoon Shadows, he celebrates a muse, the American pronghorn, which remind him of the diverse array of antelope he encountered in his youth. "On long road trips between Montana and Utah, it's so enjoyable to catch sight of pronghorns crossing the plains of light and shade as the sun starts to make its way toward the horizon," he says. To stay connected to Africa, Hacking returns fairly often. The changes that have been wrought are both inspiring (the racial separateness that he knew is gone) AS OLD AS TIME