Embedded Files
As students have engaged in learning about the Westward Expansion time period, they have examined numerous art pieces to understand how the artwork of the era influenced the ideas, perceptions, and reasons for the Westward Expansion movement. Students also collaborated with the American Museum of Western Art to learn from the curators and see the artwork in person to further their understanding of the influence art had upon the time period. For their final project, students were asked to create their own original watercolor painting that expresses their viewpoint of the Westward Expansion period. Their work samples are displayed below.
Painting Title: Crossing Into the Unknown
Artist: Sydney
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting demonstrates my view towards westward expansion. The trail symbolizes how the pioneers crossed different indigenous people’s territory and how they pushed these people out. The wagon that crossed the river demonstrates how the pioneers experienced many challenging adventures, such as crossing a river. The black cloud shows how many people crossed the last west into the unknown spaces.
Painting Title: The American Dream
Artist: Tyler
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
In my painting, I wanted to express how the whites spilled blood and I showed that in my trail that carries out into the west. I also wanted to contrast that with a peaceful sky to show the bright future that can lie ahead. I chose not to paint the mountains because I wanted them to understand that they are harsh regions that may be really inconvenient at times.
Painting Title: All The Aspects
Artist: Ruby
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I decided to paint everything that stood out to me while learning about Westward Expansion. The hats, teepees, cross, covered wagons, adobe houses, cowboy gear, and train represent the different people that were in the west such as explorers, settlers, tejanos, Native Americans, etc. There are geographical features and animals all looking left to signify that they are in the west. The gun surrounded by gold shows all the fighting that happened in the California gold rush. The arrows pointed towards the buffalo show how they were hunted.
Painting Title: Westward Bound
Artist: Ava
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The painting shows a city in the distance which represents the places that the colonists have already built a life on. The buffalo represents the people and animals that were on the land before the colonist started to settle. The red in the sky represent all the bloodshed during the westward expansion and the yellow represents the and already developed and explored by the colonists.
Painting Title: Trails Woven Westward
Artist: Sienna
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
There were many trails going west. This painting represents those many trails weaving together to go west. The painting represents the travel westward through the trails. I view the west as a place with a lot of traveling. Traveling played a massive part in westward expansion.
Painting Title: A New Era
Artist: Annalise
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting is a representation of how the West changed and developed throughout westward expansion. Its purpose is to foreshadow the change and destruction of the West. In my painting, the American flag symbolizes white settlers moving in and changing what was already there. The wide-open space and teepees represent the peaceful lands before the movement west.
Painting Title: Buffalo with a Spear in its Side Bleeding out on the Prairie
Artist: Cooper
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The buffalo that I painted is bleeding out onto the prairie after being struck by a spear thrown by white settlers. The white settlers killed buffalo without using any part of their body. They were heartless and just killed just to kill. This is hurtful to the environment in the west because buffalo take years to reach maturity and they can be killed within seconds. This wastefulness of the settlers diminish the buffalo population and killed many native people because of starvation.
Painting Title: Expand
Artist: Andrew
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This painting shows the beauty of America and how when people came they took away some of the natural beauty of America. The cart symbolizes the people expanding and the way they moved and settled the west. The mountains are purple because of the lyrics “purple mountain majesty.” The large sun represents the beautiful sunsets in Colorado. The mountains and the plains show how America is two really different parts.
Painting Title: Circumstances
Artist: Zoe
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I painted this to represent the suffering that the native people had to go through, while the colonizers just saw them as something in the way of their “mission.” While the colonizers moved west, they willingly killed many natives, yet they were indifferent to their pain. The things that the natives had to suffer through were terrible, and yet, the colonizers just went on with their lives.
Painting Title: Struggles of the West
Artist: Joel
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The west was a hard time period and people struggled to survive. The white people wanted to travel west for the good soil and living conditions. Claiming the land that they thought was their manifest destiny. The Native tribes were forced into Oklahoma from the land that they lived on all their lives. The Native American journey on the Trail of Tears was very harsh and many died.
Painting Title: Used West
Artist: Taylor
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The statement I am making with this painting is that when the pioneers were going west they left a dirty mess. For example, the Wagon wheel in the center of my painting shows the trash the pioneers left. Additionally, the cut-down trees in the back left . It also shows how the pioneers used everything for themselves but left nothing for the wildlife.
Painting Title: The Trail
Artist: Alessandra
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I drew the trails and scenery that the settlers had seen when they went through the mountains. I tried to show that even though they walked through just mountains they had seen beautiful scenery as well. I added a little lake with the mountains because in most of the pictures we looked at, there was a water source.
Painting Title: East Coast to the Rockies
Artist: Brody
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting is one big landscape painting about the other side of the Rockies, which had not been explored yet by American explorers until lewis and Clark crossed the Rockies with Sacagawea. At the bottom of the painting, you see the California hills. After the hills, you can see Moab’s red mountains and sand that fill the land with canyons and arches. The brown tabletop mountains represent the land around Grand Junction. These mountains are followed by the big Rocky Mountains of Colorado with their snow top peaks and great views. In the background, there is a sunset that sets the mood of the painting and the beauty of the west.
Painting Title: Welcome to the West
Artist: Sean
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I see the west by rolling hills, tough mountains, and wagons moving down dirt roads. I painted the wagon, the mountains, the hills, and some water. The beauty of it shows the beauty of the west, yet the imperfections show the imperfections of the west.
Painting Title: Peaceful Prairie
Artist: Maggie
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting shows the perspectives of both sides. The one side where the Natives were living their day-to-day life in the peaceful prairies. Then the other side, the side where they are venturing out west to see what's new. The side where they went through many struggles and problems just to venture out somewhere new. The painting was foreshadowing that many Americans were coming out west, but while they were settling they would be ruining many natives homes.
Painting Title: Western Waterfall
Artist: Lexi
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I wanted to show a landscape from westward expansion similar to the paintings that were used to make Americans more willing to claim new land as well as make them want to settle in the new land by showing a romanticized version of the new land. I also picked a landscape because there were many paintings of landscapes that we looked at during our lesson. I added a waterfall because many landscapes with mountains included some kind of water whether it was a lake or waterfall and also had many trees around the area.
Painting Title: Connecting Worlds
Artist: Regan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Connecting wolds represent the two very different worlds of the East and West conjoining. The east was represented through the new buildings made of modern material. The light in the East represents the familiarness to the land whereas the clouds covering the sun in the west represents the newness to the unfamiliar land. The teepees and mountains in the west show how it is almost untouched and hardly developed.
Painting Title: Indians Being Pushed Out
Artist: Carter
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I view westward expansion as the Americans moving into a land that was already occupied and claiming it as their own. The Native Americans had been using the land which is now America for many years before the Americans even stepped foot on the continent, but the Americans acted like the natives didn’t exist and took the land anyway. Then Westward Expansion happened and the Americans really started to push the Native Americans out of their land and into areas of which they had to live shoulder to shoulder. Therefore, Westward Expansion pushed the natives out of their homes and into new areas that they had never seen before.
Painting Title: Spreading our Sorrows
Artist: Kayt
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My viewpoint of the Westward Expansion is expressed throughout this painting in different ways. The tree and dark background represents the West and how it's not as gorgeous and fun as it seems. The roots from the tree are representing the trails that led people to the West and participated in the Westward Expansion. I also wanted to create smoke in the air in order to represent the harm done to Indian villages with fire.
Painting Title: The Trading Post
Artist: Riley
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I always have seen the Westward Expansion as a new start for a lot of people and a huge time for business and success and lots of opportunities. A lot of people were super successful when they went west and some were not. A lot of people played roles in helping set up the west, for example, Bentś Fort was a huge part of the west and did a ton to help the west but some others were cowboys. For example, they would help set up ranches and run cattle for farmers and ranchers, they would also run messages for the army, ranchers, and townspeople.
Painting Title: The Road of Transformation
Artist: Jane
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
During westward expansion, some people decided to move west for many reasons. There were many trails that these people decided to go on and back then it was not as easy. They had wagons that sometimes they had to pull across far distances and steep terrain. Nowadays we have cars or buses, or other means of transportation that make it easy to travel. In my painting, I pointed out the difference between back then and now to enphazie how much has changed and how hard it was back then.
Painting Title: Deception
Artist: Brady
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This painting shows my view of the westward expansion because it portrays the deception of the Americans to influence them to move out West. This was common in the West because they wanted it to seem like a place that was larger than life and uninhabited. This is shown in my painting because I show one side that is larger than life that is the expectation while the other side is a more dull Indian reservation which is the reality.
Painting Title: Fractured Reflection
Artist: Will
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This painting shows an expectation reality kind of thing with a reflection of what is expected being distorted into what really is this shows a sean that many would encounter expecting the open prairie and finding that it is not as uninhabited as they thought.
Painting Title: The Unknown Point
Artist: Tristan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting, “The Unknown Point” reflects how the westward expansion caused destruction as the Americans were expanding but also led to new beautiful explorations. The point in my painting was showing how the man was seeing a new more mystical land led by native Americans. The destruction behind him was showing how there would be more destruction of the new land they are soon to discover.
Painting Title: Color of Peace
Artist: Rowan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I wanted my painting to show that the Oregon Trail was not only hard but beautiful and peaceful. I also wanted to show that not everyone got along but they were sometimes civil. The last thing I wanted to show is that life is not all about social media it’s about how you take in the scenery.
Painting Title: The New Frontier
Artist: Luca
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The settlers entered a whole new world when they moved west. They were greeted with mountains, forests, and streams. As more people settled in the West, the landscape changed. This new frontier was a dangerous place to go, but for many, it was worth it.
Painting Title: A Whole New World
Artist: Jackson
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My art symbolizes the newness of the west to the settlers. All the new landscapes, all the new resources, space. Opportunity was the biggest thing, because it gave people a chance to try new things and do new stuff. These are the reasons many people went out west.
Painting Title: The Unknown
Artist: Keira
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This shows I see the Westward expansion. This painting idea is from the Oregon Trail. I love how they had to all these types of carriages with mostly everything from their old homes. They didnt know what was ahead of them but they still went into the unknown.
Painting Title: The Settlers' Incursion
Artist: Allie
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Westward Expansion was unjust. The settlers invaded the homelands of the indigenous peoples without considering them. They were obliged to leave or die in their homelands, and many did die. Thousands of Indigenous People were forcibly relocated by the settlers. The removal was unavoidable and certain to also be devastating. The force used to remove indigenous people from their homes is depicted in this painting. The painting depicts how unjustified the westward expansion era was.
Painting Title: Life Before Death
Artist: Cally
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting reflects my viewpoint of the westward expansion by showing both sides of the travel. Moving to the west and building a civilization can cause destruction. But this movement can also create a glorious new way of living.
Painting Title: Life on the Other Side
Artist: Kayden
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The Westward Expansion was the creation of America. In this time there was exploration and discovery. With the West came positives and negatives. My painting reflects how the Americans left some sort of destruction as they traveled west. Nature was beautiful, free, and untouched before they constructed their life.
Painting Title: Traveling West
Artist: Ryan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting symbolizes the different ways people expanded westward and what happened when they expanded westward. I put train tracks and a trail with a wagon and horse to show the different ways people expanded westward. This symbolizes the English settlers expanding west because there weren't a lot of other ways to expand west because you couldn't really take a boat. I also added buffalo into my painting because when people started expanding west, they killed a lot of buffalo for no reason, they mostly killed them because they were in the way of them building train tracks. So many buffalo were being killed that they started to grow nearer to extinction and that was bad for the indigenous people because they used the buffalo for food and without them it was a lot harder for them to find food.
Painting Title: Expansion
Artist: Martin
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting symbolizes the expansion of the Americans towards the West. It shows how treacherous and hard the trip was. It involved death, struggle, and courage. The courage to keep going, the loss of loved ones, and the struggle of the adventure to a new life. Despite all of this, my painting shows the bravery and power of the Americans which was used to build a great country.
Painting Title: The Process of Moving West
Artist: Marcela
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting is intentionally divided into 3. The first part represents the American citizens and how they live and have things like the train. The second part represents the travel to move west. The third part represents the West and how it was unknown for the settlers.
Painting Title: Taken Over
Artist: Fiona
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This piece demonstrates how Native Americans’ land got taken over. It shows how everyone traveling west created their own stops, taking over others’ homes. Those who were heading west, created a new west, a west where Native Americans weren’t very welcome.
Painting Title: All is Gone
Artist: Ireland
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The statement of this painting was to show how dangerous the Westward Expansion really was and the challenges the settlers had to face. Not everyone came out with a happy ending. This family had entered Indigenous territory. The family was too tired to fight and perished to the indigenous people.
Painting Title: The End and the Beginning
Artist: Kirwan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My art perfectly shows my view on westward expansion. The train rumbling across the plains and the town springing up represents the rapid modernization of land that lived the same way for centuries. The wagon caravan crossing the river shows how many changed their lives by crossing the land into the new west. The Native American village being approached by US Cavalry soldiers represents the Natives way of life is changed forever. The setting sun sums it all up. The old way of life for the Natives and the west is closing and the new way of the US and modernization coming in.
Painting Title: Way to West
Artist: Braydon
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting represents the overall attitude of this painting by conveying the new unexplored terrain the West holds. Like the cross in the painting, this represents the reason they expanded. Another element this painting holds is the lighting which shows the overall explored and unexplored terrain throughout the west. Some little details shown throughout this painting that gives the viewer a feel of the West is the buffalo with spears in them showing all of them killed along the way. Overall, all this combines into a painting that represents a serious feel of the west by showing how you can really expect anything if you expand westward.
Painting Title: Bloodshed In The Sky
Artist: Savannah
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My point of view is from both sides, how the natives lost many and how the Colonies lost many. The blood coming from the sky represents how both sides took place in the fact of so many dying, and losing so many. The blood rains everyone on everything and everyone showing how the colonies won’t keep the land sacred anymore. The Native Americas have the tipis covered in native prints, whereas the colonies have the skyscrapers and the trains the separation between the different types of land. The different types of trees represent how much land the colonies took over as well as the difference in which they treat the land. The Americans plant crops and destroy the trees to make way for buildings, whereas the native Americans use the land. The river represents how many rivers meant during the expansion of the Mississippi with Lewis and Clark the Arkansaw with the borders of America and Mexico also playing a big part in the Santa Fe trail and therefore the fort. The words on the tent and buildings represent The words guiding the separate sides. The people are those in which are a part of the history giving the colonies more because we hear those stories and not the natives. The different terrain proves how much land the colonists took.
Painting Title: Our to Take
Artist: Kyle
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I view the west as an untouched piece of land where dreams come true, the land is discovered and people gain land. My painting shows the trails that explorers used to lead their people west. My painting also shows the culture of the west.
Painting Title: Takeover
Artist: Neela
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting reflects my viewpoint of westward expansion because it shows the invasion and the takeover that happened to the Indigenous peoples. All of the settlers came to the west to start new lives; they came to trade, farm, become mountain men, etc. By doing all of these things, they began to take over and disrupt Native land. I see this as a way to describe westward expansion.
Painting Title: Elk
Artist: Buck
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
This painting reflects the Westward Expansion movement because paintings like these influenced people to head westward. These paintings are usually over-amplified so people would think that the west was this new place no one had seen before. This technique inspired people to move westward and gave them a sense that they could make new lives in the west and see beautiful land. These reasons are why paintings furthered westward expansion.
Painting Title: Sunset on the Trail
Artist: Cole
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting is designed to look like what people might have thought it looked like when they thought about traveling to the west. It was much rougher and not as calm or peaceful. There would be less grass because of all the people moving west.
Painting Title: Don't Fence Me In
Artist: Travis
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting depicts a large wide open space somewhere in the Midwest, Possibly Kansas or Colorado. There are two large buttes in the background that show the immense size of the land. To me, the West during the time of Westward expansion was an adventurous, wide-open, and beautiful land, which my painting depicts.
Painting Title: Invasion of the West
Artist: Eleni
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting demonstrates westward expansion by showing where people came from and where they are headed. This is showing that the migrators were coming from St. Lewis, Missouri, and are headed into the west. They went where the mountains are uninhabited and the Native Americans were settled. The tones in my painting show that one side is old and dreary and the other is vibrant and new.
Painting Title: The Buffalo
Artist: Raven
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I see the west as a vast place with mountains and lakes all over. Animals roamed their land with the natives, like the American buffalo. Buffalo represents nature and courage in a way, showing what was needed just to exist in an area like that. I wanted to represent the beauty of it all and I think I was successful.
Painting Title: Faceless
Artist: Annabelle
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
In my painting, I used mountains as a symbol of the treacherous trail people used in the westward expansion. The main thing in my painting is the Native Americans shown in the front of the painting. They do not have a face to represent how poorly they were treated and forced off their land. At the time many people did not see them as people so I made them faceless to tell their story of being pushed off of their land. This shows how I see the westward expansion.
Painting Title: The Abandoned Mine
Artist: Max
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
My painting shows my viewpoint of Westward Expansion. The Gold Rush represents this by showing that some people failed to make a living and had to abandon their mine or settlement.
Painting Title: Life of Indigenous Children
Artist: Ellie
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I created indigenous children running and playing games to represent the innocent side of their culture. Many paintings depict indigenous peoples being violent and obsessed with war, but they are humans just like everyone else. Children like to play, elders tell stories, and they all just enjoy being together. I think the most important thing to remember when learning about Westward Expansion is that despite all the violence that occurred during it, the indigenous peoples loved life just as much as the white people.
Painting Title: Peaceful Encounter
Artist: Hailey
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I chose to paint a wagon riding through a native village to show the peace and nature of moving westward. Although most of the expansion that was documented was all war and difficult, I decided to paint a calm moment to show it wasn't all bad. I painted teepees to show that Americans can go through the land without being attacked because native Americans were always portrayed as attackers.
Painting Title: The Plains
Artist: Sam
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
I believe that the Westward expansion took place in many open areas featuring plateaus and mountains but it is mainly plains. However, it wasn´t really like this. It had many more mountains, hills, and formations. It wasn´t all wide open area that it is portrayed to be. This is a portrayal of what many people thought it was.
Painting Title: Buffalo on a Cloudy Day
Artist: Graham
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
The dark blob above the blue, green, and brown, are the clouds, forming a rainstorm. The large clump of brown represents buffalo, in herds, as they travel as a group, and never alone. The blue is supposed to showcase the sky, as if a part of the sky has not been covered by clouds. The green represents the plains, healthy, and full of color. This painting represents Westward expansion for it’s discovery of land like this. You can somewhat feel like a Westward explorer, and approaching land like this for the first time ever.
Painting Title:
Artist: Blake
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Painting Title:
Artist: Monty
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Painting Title:
Artist: Ronan
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Painting Title:
Artist: Monty
Artist Statement reflecting your viewpoint of Westward Expansion:
Page updated
Report abuse