VENTURA COUNTY NEWS : Art Historian : Painter on Journey to Re-Create Expedition of Lewis and Clark

It took Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lt. William Clark two years, four months and nine days to blaze the first trail from the mouth of the Wood River in Illinois to the Pacific Ocean and back again nearly 200 years ago.

If all goes well, it will take Bob Rickards of Thousand Oaks 23 years to finish 80 oil paintings depicting their journey.

By Rickards’ count, that is a third of his life well-spent.

“I just don’t want to lose that American heritage,” Rickards said. “I want to recapture a little bit of the past through these paintings.”

If Rickards does finish all 80 paintings, he could be the first to cover the topic in such depth. Many artists have covered canvasses with Lewis and Clark adventures, said Barb Kubik, president-elect of the Montana-based Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. But, she said, “I don’t know that any of them have done 80 of them.” So far, he has completed 30.

Rickards, 63, a planner for the city of Thousand Oaks, is a natural for the project. He is a self-taught artist with a love for American history and all things Western. Many people know him as “Buffalo Bob” or “Buffalo,” a reflection of his favorite painting subject after Lewis and Clark. The Kansas native and former Conejo Valley Days grand marshal usually dresses in Western garb, although he will forgo it on a hot day in favor of a buffalo T-shirt.

Twenty years ago, Rickards picked up a book on the Lewis and Clark expedition and he couldn’t put it down.

“As I read it, I was so awed by what the country looked like then,” Rickards said. He immediately started painting the pictures in his head.

In his vividly detailed paintings, Rickards depicts the trip’s milestones, like the day the adventurers nearly lost their keelboat and had to pull it with ropes, or the night Indians danced around a fire in celebration of the food the explorers brought them. He started where Lewis and Clark started, launching into the Missouri River, and continued painting the events in the order they happened.

“When I’m painting, I’m not painting ahead of the expedition. I’m going along with it,” he said. “It’s a labor of love because each painting is different, it has a different challenge.”

Much of the challenge is the research. Rickards has read the three-volume set of logs detailing the 8,000-mile journey five or six times. He has studied everything from the types of building tools used then to the changes in the Missouri River’s course over the years. He visited several sites along the trail.

From the beginning, Rickards envisioned more than just the 20-by-24-inch paintings. He wants to publish them in a coffee-table book where each would be accompanied by a map and an excerpt from the logs. He would also like to sell lithograph copies of the paintings.

He doesn’t have a publisher or the investors he needs to pull all this off, though. The only connection he has made is with a gallery owner in Wyoming, who is considering an exhibit of the paintings.

“I’ve been kind of keeping it under wraps from everybody. I didn’t want any competitors,” he said.

Such a venture has a lot of potential, said Kubik, of the Lewis and Clark foundation. She said the recent releases of Ken Burns’ movie, “Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery,” and Stephen Ambrose’s bestseller, “Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West,” have made the subject popular. The approach of the 200th anniversary of the expedition May 14, 2004 will only fuel the fire, she added.

Rickards wants to paint his last canvas in 2003 so he can put everything together in time to tie it to the bicentennial. With only 31 of the 80 paintings he plans completed, he needs to pick up the pace. At this point, Lewis and Clark have yet to cross the Rocky Mountains or catch sight of the Pacific Ocean, let alone start on the return voyage.

“It’s not taking up enough of my time. What’s taking up my time is working at the city and a lot of the charity work I do in the community,” Rickards said.

Painting only after work and on weekends, each canvas takes four to five weeks to complete.

Getting Rickards to cut back on his involvement with groups like the Kiwanis Club and Conejo Valley Historical Society will be tough, said his wife, Jane. But she doesn’t doubt for a second that he will finish in time.

“This is very meaningful to him,” Jane said. “If he had his way, he would bring Lewis and Clark back and we’d all go along the trail with them. Instead, he brings them to life so that you feel like you’re really there.”