Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018/ No.136 i Western Art Collector

As a young girl, Naoma McLachlan, who was born in Salt Lake City, visited the University of Utah’s Museum of Fine Art. Fascinated by the works from French paintings to Egyptian artifacts she said “I’d like to learn how all these were made and the history behind them.” She particularly recalls a portrait of Natacha Ramova who was also born in Salt Lake City as Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy and was married briefly to Rudolph Valentino. She later became a renowned Egyptologist and donated her important collection of Egyptian artifacts to the museum in 1954. The romance and dedication of Ramova’a life had a lasting impact on Naoma’s own life. She became a certified gemologist and, in 1979, married Harold “Hal” Tate. Hal had been a member of the board of…

In 1965, four cowboy artists found themselves huddled around a table at the Oak Creek Tavern in Sedona, Arizona. The men, quick to laugh and in good spirits, threw back some beers and reflected back on a trip from a year earlier in Mexico, where they worked on a cattle ranch and bonded over the shared experience. And that’s how the Cowboy Artists of America was born. Throw a rock in a still pond and the ripples radiate outward across the whole pond, but the ripples are largest near the center. A 90-minute drive to the southwest from Oak Creek Tavern, in Prescott, Arizona, Bill Nebeker had a front row view of Western art history, a history he would soon be contributing to. “It was an exciting time back then,”…

For many, Western art conjures visions of Arizona deserts, the rocky vistas of Utah and lush California landscapes. But there is currently a rich tradition of the artform east of the Mississippi, where the Blue Ridge Mountains, Florida marshes and rugged coastlines inspire a similar awe. Northwest of Atlanta in Cartersville, Georgia, is the Booth Western Art Museum. Along with its many rotating exhibitions, the museum brings the West back home with its annual Southeastern Cowboy Gathering, which hosts Western art, music, poetry and a chuck wagon invitational during a three-day celebration, March 21 through 23. The museum’s Southeastern Cowboy Festival & Symposium takes place in 2019 from October 24 through 27. Within the city are the Miami Circle Art District and the West Midtown Arts District, which is home…

Missouri-based painter Jeff Aeling is fond of a story that was told during a conversation between mythologist Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers in the famous 1988 PBS documentary The Power of Myth. The story goes that a group of indigenous people, who were constantly surrounded on all sides by dense jungle vegetation, were taken out of the jungle and into a vast desert. “They freaked out. They had never experienced vastness on that scale,” Aeling says. “When you’re connected to nature in that way, being in a vista of that size can feel alienating. And for me, it can also be more contemplative, more of an internal experience.” Aeling will be bringing new landscapes, many of them of vast open plains and expansive skies, to Mark Sublette Medicine Man…

Charles Pierce’s RIDER SERIES came about after the Oklahoma artist’s painting Distant Rider, which hangs at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, sparked questions as to when he would create more paintings featuring his horse and rider. The artwork blossomed from there. Pierce says the series is representative, in many ways, of the importance of horses to the Indian Nation as a whole, and what a prominent role horses played in their everyday lives. “I used to ride horses when I was a kid all the time… their mode of transportation, how they moved across the United States, it’s kind of like a spirit of following the seasons,” Pierce says of the series. All acrylic on paper, new works include Tequila Sunrise, a scene of striking, highly saturated…

Smaller-scale artworks from some of the leading Western artists in the country will be showcased at InSight Gallery’s end-of-the-year small works show, including Jill Carver, John Fawcett, Phil Bob Borman, George Hallmark, Scott Burdick, David Griffin and Jeremy Browne. The exhibition, which hangs from November 26 to December 31, will showcase up to 60 works in total. Rodeo Gals, illustrating two girls on horseback, is a highly textured piece with thick layers of paint. Burdick, who created the piece, explains that it was inspired by a neighbor down the road from their home in North Carolina who trains girls to participate in rodeos. “This painting depicts two of the girls Lisa trains waiting their turn to enter the barrel racing competition. They also tie goats, rope cows and even do…

John Bye has made quite an impression in the Western art market. In addition to being an invited participant in the Masters of the American West exhibition, Bye’s art can be seen in the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art and has been featured on the cover of Western Horseman magazine. His oil rig and Western landscape paintings have been acquired by prominent collections including those of oil and gas company owners. “The landscapes of the American West are vast and striking. Cloud formations are breathtaking along with sunsets and weather conditions, [which] make for excellent subject matter and add another dimension to the painting,” Bye says. “The Western landscape accompanied by cowboys or Native Americans is a testing journey in each painting I create, from conception through to…

More than 200 lots of Western and Native American artwork will arrive at auction during John Moran Auctioneers’ December 12 Art of the American West sale. Taking place at 2 p.m. in the Monrovia, California, showroom, the auction will include jewelry, basketry, weavings, paintings, photography and prints at a variety of price points to appeal to every level of collector. Early New Mexico artists will be among the standouts of the sale. Sheldon Parsons, who settled in Santa Fe in 1913, is represented by a study for Autumn in New Mexico, which is expected to sell between $5,000 and $7,000. The piece, measuring just over 15 by 19 inches, is an oil on board depicting a lush autumnal landscape in an impressionistic style. Prominent in the painting are golden hues…

The National Endowment for the Humanities, the independent grant-making agency of the United States government, has awarded the Autry Museum of the American West a grant totaling $400,000 to re-envision its current popular culture gallery as Imagined Wests, a new exhibition designed to expand public conceptions of the American West in mass media and the arts. The exhibition will feature hundreds of objects from across the Autry’s collections. It will open in the 5,000-square-foot space in the Ted and Marian Craver Imagination Gallery. For 30 years the Imagination Gallery has focused on how Western film has evolved as a response to social and cultural changes taking place throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. “The new exhibition will weave the historic Imagination Gallery spirit together with new ideas and themes thoroughly…

Prior to the October 6 opening of the Cowboy Crossings exhibition at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma, the Cowboy Artists of America quietly met for an annual member meeting in one of the museum’s halls. In addition to CAA business, the group also viewed artwork and voted on new members. This year one artist made the cut, Utah painter Chad Poppleton. “I don’t know how else to really say it, but I was blown away,” says Poppleton. “I’ve known the CAs since I was a little kid. I always wanted to be a CA—it was a childhood dream.” Poppleton, who is primarily a wildlife painter who also paints cowboy subject matter, will be the most prominent wildlife artist in the group. During the interview process, the…

Dec. 7-Apr. 13, 2019: James Morgan Retrospective Exhibit: Moments in the Wild STEAMBOAT ART MUSEUM | Steamboat Springs, CO | (970) 870-1755 | www.steamboatartmuseum.org DECEMBER Through Dec. 1 HOCKADAY MUSEUM OF ART A Timeless Legacy: Peace Park 2018 Kalispell, MT – (406) 755-5268 www.hockadaymuseum.org Dec. 1-2 NATIONAL HISPANIC CULTURAL CENTER 30th annual Winter Spanish Market Albuquerque, NM – (505) 982-2226 www.spanishcolonial.org Dec. 1- June 2, 2019 BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM Bob Kolbrener: 50 Years in the West Cartersville, GA – (770) 387-1300 www.boothmuseum.org Through Dec. 2 DESERT CABALLEROS WESTERN MUSEUM On the Homefront: Raising Dollars and Doughboys Wickenburg, AZ – (928) 684-2272 www.westernmuseum.org Dec. 3-15 TRAILSIDE GALLERIES Deck the Walls: Holiday Miniature Show 2018 Jackson, WY – (307) 733-3186 www.trailsidegalleries.com Dec. 1-April 21, 2019 PHIPPEN MUSEUM Embrace the Struggle: Chris…

There is an art to painting animals in their natural habitat. The animals live in their habitats and are one with them. An artist who experiences and keenly observes, develops a seemingly easy familiarity with nature and can make the animal and its setting more—as it were—natural. Growing up and living in Utah, James Morgan became familiar with nature’s big picture as well as its details—the big changes of the seasons and the subtle changes of light throughout the day. He became familiar with the way animals live in and interact with their environment. Living at the base of the Westville Mountain Range, Morgan feels the area has enough wildlife and landscape to inspire him for a lifetime. He says, “I seek to achieve a balance between the subject and…

Brilliant oranges, shimmering yellows, deep reds and greens that seem to fade into the sky are just some of the beautiful colors that will be present in Troy Collins’ new show at Mountain Trails Gallery in Park City, Utah. The show opens December 27, with an artist reception on December 28, from 4 to 7 p.m. Collins, who lives in Hamilton, Montana, is frequently inspired by the nature around him, especially aspens, which appear frequently in his work. The white-barked trees allow for interesting contrasts with the shadows and surrounding natural foliage. “They’re such dynamic trees and, compositionally, they allow for so many opportunities in a painting,” Collins says, adding that his impasto painting technique further elevates his color off the canvas to allow for an almost three-dimensional effect. “Mixing…

Raymond Gibby is interested in symbolism and deriving deep meaning from visual representations. “Things that are obvious tend to not offer the mental or spiritual challenge that my soul craves. I am also interested in the human condition, so I tend to address that subject using wildlife as a mode for conveying a message within my bronze artworks,” Gibby says. Although he will periodically sculpt a study of an animal to simply appreciate the unique beauty of the species, Gibby says he finds that specific animals performing certain actions can symbolically be used as a method to reflect his own human flaws, strengths and desires. “I also find that the way humans interact with animals reveals a lot about our own human character. So, at times I will portray the…

Hidden from the glamour of the big city lights and the metropolitan way of life is a story few will ever hear and a life few will ever know—an unlikely story that started in the Chihuahuan Desert near the tiny oasis village of Coyame, Mexico. Manuel Socorro Franco was born to Don Tello and Soledad Juarez de Franco who mentored their children in the lessons of life and survival gathered from their own Apache and Mexican heritage. At the expense of creature comforts, Don Tello and Soledad Juarez de Franco gave their children every opportunity in education that the family could afford, and their sacrifices helped lead Franco to earn a degree in mining engineering from the University of Chihuahua. After mining for years in Mexico, Franco came to America…

Frederic Remington is certainly one of the greatest Western artists to have ever picked up a brush, but one often-overlooked fact about the painter and sculptor is that he was primarily based on the East Coast. And with such close proximity to non-Western subject matter, his brush would often wander. Many of those great paintings from the East are the subject of a new exhibition now ongoing at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Another Frontier: Frederic Remington’s East features paintings, photographs and objects on loan from the Frederic Remington Art Museum, as well as archival items from the St. Lawrence University Special Collections Library, both in New York near areas where Remington grew up, worked and lived. In an unprecedented exchange, the Sid Richardson Museum is also…

When early visitors to Glacier National Park visited the Glacier Park Lodge they immediately saw wonderful murals that decorated the lodge walls. When the lodges were remodeled in the 1950s, some of the murals were cut from their moldings, removed from their panels, rolled up and thrown away—seemingly lost forever. But 15 of the murals were saved and stored at the home of Leona and Robert Brown, who passed them down to their granddaughter Leanne and her husband Alan Goldhahn. In September of 2012, Leanne donated the murals to the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana, in memory of her grandparents, Leona and Robert. Now seven of those murals have been restored and are now on view at three locations in Montana: three are on permanent display at the…

Author’s Note: I was honored to be asked to participate in this project, allowing me to help publicize the work of deserving artists. However, once I got into the process of picking artists to be included it was a daunting task to try to remain objective and separate the art from the personalities attached to them. I know there will be friends of mine who will not understand why they were not included and I will have to deal with that. On the other hand, there were artists who simply chose not to participate for various reasons. Looking back there are a couple younger artists I wish I had included, but at the time I felt they weren’t quite there yet. The premise of both books—Western Art of the Twenty-First…

For 400 years, wild horses have roamed the shores of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Early explorers from Spain, put in a difficult spot, had to ditch their cargo, including horses, and the creatures have thrived on the islands ever since. These majestic creatures are the subject of Michael Klein’s upcoming solo exhibition at Maxwell Alexander Gallery. Klein stumbled upon the theme after moving from New York City to North Carolina. “These horses have been doing the same thing for hundreds of years, just grazing the lands, and as a subject they haven’t changed at all,” Klein says. “The imagery is really incredible. It felt very European, and very historical, and yet it exists right in front of us.” In Kindred Spirits, Klein portrays his wife, admiring two horses in a…

The Utah landscape takes center stage during the exhibition Point of View at Modern West Fine Art in Salt Lake City. On display will be the works of husband-and-wife artists Tom Judd and Kiki Gaffney, whose dynamic pieces highlight their individual interpretations of the land. Liberty Blake, curator of the show, says, “Judd originally from Utah, now residing in Philadelphia, returns to the places he once knew. Through his work he explores visual memories, creating nostalgic paintings that evoke the experience of a past reality. Collaged and layered, they call to mind a carefully made scrapbook, both tender and personal. Gaffney grew up in Pennsylvania and experiences Utah as a visitor. She approaches her work with a careful attention to detail examining the environment, often seeing things for the first…

Eighteen years ago sculptor John Coleman had his first museum retrospective at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, a short hourlong drive to the south from his home and studio in Prescott. On December 14, Coleman will return to Desert Caballeros for another retrospective, a new one that will reflect an immense amount of growth that the sculptor—and now also painter—has gone through in nearly two decades of creating Western art. “It was neat when they did it back then, and I had fun helping put it together, but this one is going to be its own thing, that’s for sure. For starters, there will be paintings in this one,” says Coleman, who unveiled the painting aspect of his work at a huge soldout show in Scottsdale in…

During the expansion westward of the United States, the covered wagon played an essential role by providing shelter and transportation for settlers as they forged into the great unknown. December 8 through March 10, Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, will celebrate the chuck wagon, Conestogas, freight wagons and stagecoaches in the show Wagons West. On display will be 25 works of art as well as artifacts from rarely seen private collections that provide a glimpse into these bygone days. “Wickenburg has a rich history of the wagon crossroads and it was quite appropriate for us to commemorate that through the exhibition,” says Dan Finley, executive director of the museum. He adds there will be works by both contemporary and historic artists, with most of the pieces coming from…