Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019/ No.142 i Western Art Collector

On March 21, the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, honored painter William Matthews and former United States senator Alan Simpson with the 2019 Heritage Award—Williams was recognized for his artistic achievement, while Simpson received the award for his statesmanship. The award recognizes significant contributions in interpreting and documenting the legacy, culture, life and country of Charles M. Russell’s West. The museum awards the honor annually in areas of artistic achievement, musical achievement, Western storytelling, preservation, conservation and statesmanship. Previous winners have included Western art scholars such as Brian W. Dippie, Peter Hassrick, Larry Len Peterson and Byron Price, as well as Western master painter Howard Terpning. In a statement about the awards, the museum acknowledges Matthews’ depictions of the West. “Matthews’ work has captured the attention and imagination…

On June 7 the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, will mark the centennial of the Cody Stampede, a multi-day rodeo that has taken place every year, except during World War II, since 1919. Whoop It Up! Celebrating 100 Years of the Cody Stampede will feature vintage photographs, artwork, artifacts and film footage that celebrates the event. The exhibition will interpret the Stampede in the context of its precursor, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, with its heroic portrayal of the American cowboy taming wild broncs. Whoop It Up! will also connect to the diverse cast of lady riders, cowgirls, trick riders and ropers of the Old West. The Cody Stampede originally grew out of local Independence Day celebrations. In the early days, it featured an exciting program of…

Our collectors met a little over a year ago. She came from a family who collected art and is a collector herself. He had collected a few pieces of Western art and some Native American pieces and lived in a large home in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, Arizona, with “kind of bare walls,” she recalls. They are now engaged, have been collecting together, and soon her collection will be merged with his. Her late father was chief geologist for a major oil company and eventually started a family gas and oil business. He began collecting early in his career and recalled purchasing a piece by Blackbear Bosin (Commanche/Kiowa). “Over the years, I admired Blackbear Bosin’s work, and after an exchange of letters, I drove to his home in Wichita,…

Several months ago I had the pleasure of realizing every serious collector’s dream when I had the opportunity to “shadow” a great artist—in this case Z.S. Liang—as he developed the idea for his latest major painting, did the necessary research, prepared an initial drawing, refined subsequent drawings, prepared a study, drew the final version on the canvas, spent weeks painting the composition and, finally, made minor changes and or corrections before the painting was deemed to be complete and ready for framing. Getting to know Z.S. over the past several years, I very quickly learned that the reasons why he has been so successful in his portrayal of Native Americans, with his paintings, are varied. First and foremost, he is a naturally very talented and skilled artist, which goes back…

The French paleontologist and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) wrote, “The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.” As mountains become sand, many are still growing. The Himalayas gain about a centimeter a year. It is thought that the Rockies grow at a slower rate. I once began to read about the geology of the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area with volcanic peaks on one side of the valley and tectonic peaks on the other. I became hopelessly lost in their complex history and was left with the romance…

Nicholas Coleman has been all over the United States, to Canada, Europe and even Africa. For two years, as a missionary for his church, he lived in the southern-most tip of Brazil near the border with Uruguay. He’s seen what other parts of the world have to offer. And yet he has chosen the American West to lay down his roots. This abstract idea of home—and what that may look like—is the underlying theme of the Utah artist’s new show, Living in the West, which opens June 1 at Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Every town has a story, and it’s those stories that help tell our own tales about the places we call home. “Growing up in the West, in my opinion, has been pretty fantastic. My town…

As the summer art season gets underway in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Trailside Galleries will host the exhibition High Country Summer featuring brand-new paintings by its roster of artists. The show, running June 17 to 29, “attracts a wide group of art buyers given the variety of original works that are available.” On view will be pieces from Morgan Weistling, John DeMott, Jeremy Browne, Matt Smith, Michael Malm, Kathleen Dunphy, Stan Davis, Alfredo Rodriguez, Bradley Schmehl, Dinah Worman, Bruce Cheever, Dustin Van Wechel and more. Mian Situ will present several new works in the show including Creek Crossing, which depicts cowboys on horseback crossing a river. Describing the piece, he says, “Near the [Black Hills] Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota, the twilight of the setting sun hits the cliff facing…

“My heart was always warm in Montana,” Joseph Henry Sharp, to Samuel Guil Reynolds, Indian Agent, Crow Agency, Montana While most people trace the founding of the Taos Society of Artists back to the legend of the broken wagon wheel, it actually came into existence much earlier, more than a decade earlier to be precise, when Joseph Henry Sharp first headed West—first to Santa Fe, then to Taos and then eventually to Montana, fueled by a passion to paint the chiefs of the Great Plains who survived the Battle of Little Big Horn. Sharp first traveled to Santa Fe in 1883 and then to Taos in 1893 and it was Sharp, who while studying at the Academie Julian in 1894, whispered to his fellow students Ernest Bluemenschein and Bert Phillips…

It wasn’t long into last year’s Cody Old West Show & Auction in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before show owner Brian Lebel knew him and his team had made the right move to the Land of Enchantment. But then, as the show progressed, it was confirmed further by the collectors and dealers who had connected with each other during the two-day show. It made the choice to return to Santa Fe a “no brainer.” “We’re feeling very good about returning to Santa Fe. Business is poppin’. We’re getting lots of phone calls. There are more than 100 dealers on our waiting list. Everything is looking really good,” says Lebel. “And we get to take what we learned last year and improve on it. For instance, now that we know our…

COAST-TO-COAST COVERAGE Find out what’s happening across the nation. Western Art Collector is the first magazine to provide nationwide coverage of upcoming shows and auctions showcasing Western art from coast to coast. PREVIEWS In the Preview pages we reveal new contemporary and historic Western works about to become available for sale at the country’s leading Western art galleries. AUCTION AND EVENT PREVIEWS AND REPORTS Each month we alert you to upcoming Western art auctions and events nationwide. Read our reports on prices fetched so you can stay informed and up-to-date on the market. WESTERN ART INSIGHTS Find out everything the discerning collector needs to know. Each month our panel of art consultants, museum curators and experts share their behind-the-scenes knowledge of how the Western art market works. STATE OF THE…

Painter Teal Blake had intended on going live with his first Kickstarter campaign at around 10 a.m. on April 11, but nervous energy got the best of him. “I was a wreck in the days and weeks leading up to it going live, so instead of waiting until 10 a.m. I posted it at about 2:30 that morning,” he says. “I just wasn’t sure how it was going to be received.” By breakfast on that first day, he had $5,000 in crowd-funded pledges. “It was a huge weight off my shoulders,” he adds. “At that point I thought four or five days would really bring it all together.” In reality it was about four or five hours. By dinner the project, with a goal of $15,000, was fully funded…and then…

Art exhibitions come and go. The good ones get insightful catalogs or get to travel to other venues. The great ones inspire the culture and a new generation of artists. And occasionally, one gets to live forever. In 1919, Charles M. Russell, at the peak of his career, sent 24 paintings and eight bronzes to the Calgary Stampede for an exhibition tied to the opening of the rodeo, which was returning to Calgary after several missed years due to World War I. The work Russell sent north to Canada was essentially a greatest hits collection. Masterpiece after masterpiece, these works were inspired by or created specifically for the now-legendary exhibition at the Calgary Stampede. And now, 100 years later, they’re being brought together again to celebrate Russell’s presence in Calgary…

Edward Aldrich’s wildlife paintings do more than simply transfer photo to canvas. While superbly photorealistic, his animals are also deeply expressive, their personalities permeating the two-dimensional space and connecting with viewers on a human level. The artist travels to various locations to observe the wildlife he paints, sometimes going into the wild and sometimes to captive environments like sanctuaries, taking reference photos and often getting what some might feel is too close for comfort to the animals themselves. Oddly enough, he explains, it’s actually in these captive environments that he’s able to dive more deeply into the personalities of the animals and form a connection with them. “It’s such a miraculous thing, and I want to try to imbue the paintings with that emotion,” he says. This is a cornerstone…

With blocks of color, stylized renderings of figures and horses, and lots of little details—artificial borders, thick outlines on figures and monotone-like color applications—Michael Swearngin’s work invokes modern art, and even Pop Art. It’s no surprise then that he has a mantra that propels him forward: “Driven by design.” “Driven by design, I use simple shapes to establish a strong composition on the canvas. I then work the under-painting with dramatic color and texture for high visual impact. It is through my art form that I intuitively paint to express the worn rugged spirit of the American West in my contemporary style,” Swearngin says. “Every painting is an exploration of these experiences and my objective is to share them with the viewer.” The Arizona artist will have a new solo…

Iconic views and hidden gems from throughout the Land of Enchantment will be on display during the landscape exhibition Re-Imagining New Mexico at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe. The four-artist show, running June 28 through August 3, will feature landmarks done in a variety of mediums including watercolors, woodblock prints and oils by Mike Glier, Leon Loughridge, James McElhinney and Don Stinson. Glier is an artist who lives outside of New Mexico but returns to the state often to record its beauty. Over the past few years, rather than making exact interpretations of the lands, he has tried to use his senses to record his experience of the place. Communicated in the work is not only what he sees, but also what he hears, feels on his skin and…

Jeff Love fell in love with the mountains on his first visit to Colorado at the age of 13. Love felt like the line from John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High described that moment: “Coming home to a place he’s never been before.” Since that day, as an artist, he has been captivated with painting mountains. Two years later, at the age of 15, he moved to Colorado and began painting the Rockies from life. As a self-described adventurer and now living in Tucson, Arizona, Love and his wife regularly travel the mountain states in their RV to paint and gather reference material for painting in his studio. Most of Love’s mountain paintings are of pristine mountain areas untouched by mankind, and at the very least they are painted as though…

More than 1,500 patrons turned up for the 14th annual Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West exhibition March 29 in Wickenburg, Arizona. The event, held at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, is one of the top Western shows in the country geared exclusively to women. The exhibition continuously brings together fresh perspectives, art styles and subject matter in a show that features both traditional and contemporary Western artists. This year’s show saw a huge turnout, which was especially noticeable during the quickdraw on the last day of the opening weekend as visitors spilled from crowded sidewalks onto the closed-off street that runs in front of the museum. It was often elbow to elbow as onlookers craned to see the artists painting their works in front of…

When you go to The Russell, you expect to see lots of work by hometown hero Charles M. Russell: big ones, little ones, watercolors, oils, bronzes, ones worth only—only!?—$25,000 and Russells worth millions of dollars. And once again, The Russell has lived up to its reputation. From March 21 through 23, Western collectors made Great Falls, Montana, home for the annual event put on by the C.M. Russell Museum. This year’s festivities once again included a huge selection of events and activities: art preview parties, the famous Art in Action quickdraw, a fashion show, a presentation of new work by the Russell Skull Society of Artists, an educational symposium and two live auctions. “Year after year, The Russell unites tremendous art and great friends in a celebration of Charlie and…

Dozens of prominent painters will return to the Hockaday Musuem in Kalispell, Montana, from June 14 through 21 for the annual Plein Air Glacier event. The event, which takes place near and frequently honors Glacier National Park, will once again celebrate the timeless traditions of the park and nearby Swan and Flathead valleys with a paint-out and other art events. Now in its 12th year, Plein Air Glacier has become a favorite of museum patrons and of the artists who return to paint the scenery in front of a live audience. The paintings they create will be offered on June 22, from 5 to 8 p.m. The fixed-price sale will benefit the museum. Participating artists this year include Rob Akey, Vernon Anderson, Jeff Manion, Robert Marceau, David Mihalic, Wanda Mumm,…

A gave, prickly pear, oleander, saguaro and succulents. These are just a few of the many botanicals you’ll find in the Arizona desert. And from June 8 through October 20, visitors can view a wide array of desert flora depicted by Arizonan artists at Desert Caballeros Western Museum in the upcoming exhibition Flower Power: Desert Botanicals. Featured artists include oil painter Dyana Hesson, romantic realist Jeanne Bonine, contemporary artist Beth Zink, Sonoran Desert native Sheila Kollasch and fine artist Matilda Essig. Bonnie, whose work gives an up-close, intricate view of vibrant desert flowers, says, “With dreamy backgrounds, my larger-than-life watercolor and oil botanicals lure the viewer into the complexity of the detailed subjects I paint. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the art, nature and the lover of both.” She…

JUNE June 1 RANCHING HERITAGE ASSOCIATION Summer Stampede Western Art and Gear Show Lubbock, TX – (806) 834-0469 www.ranchingheritage.org June 1-2 THE FORT RESTAURANT 19th Annual Indian Market and Powwow Morrison, CO – (303) 839-1671 www.tesoroculturalcenter.org June 1-30 NANCY CAWDREY STUDIOS AND GALLERY Erin Hanson: American Vistas Whitefish, MT – (406) 755-2727 www.nancycawdrey.com June 7-Ongoing MOUNTAIN TRAILS GALLERY Spirit of the Cowgirl Sedona, AZ – (928) 282-3225 www.mountaintrailssedona.com June 7-30 MANITOU GALLERIES Don Brackett, Jerry Jordan and Jim Eppler Santa Fe, NM – (505) 986-0440 www.manitougalleries.com June 7-March 31, 2020 BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST Whoop It Up! Celebrating 100 Years of the Cody Stampede Cody, WY – (307) 587-4771 www.centerofthewest.org June 8-29 GALLERY 1261 Inward: David Grossman Solo Exhibition Denver, CO – (303) 571-1261 www.gallery1261.com June 8-October 20 DESERT…

Thomas Moran (1837-1926) is, perhaps, best known for his paintings of the Yellowstone region which, in 1872, were influential in the decision by Congress to create the world’s first national park. Earlier, in 1860, he painted Columbus Approaching San Salvador, a tropical scene with a group of people huddled together in the relative vastness of the landscape. They gaze out to sea where white sails are barely visible on the horizon. Mark Dolph, curator of history at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, explains, “I believe that Thomas Moran presents Columbus’ ‘Discovery’ of the Americas as one of those truly rare moments in history where the trajectory of the world changed in ways that no one—certainly not Columbus and his men aboard those three ships, nor the Native people pondering…

Set in the state of the same name, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! depicts the vast tallgrass Prairie Plains, golden wheat fields and overarching natural beauty. Equally as vibrant is Oklahoma’s diverse arts and culture community. With more than 25 Native languages spoken, the Sooner State carries on the history of Native American tribes and the Old West while celebrating its future with a plethora of history and art museums, galleries and cultural festivals—many of which can be found in the Tulsa Arts District. Tulsa’s riverfront park, Gathering Place—which opened last summer—is a hotspot for awe-inspiring art installations with its Art in the Park series. The park’s most recent exhibitions include Cabinet of Wonder created by internationally renowned artist Mark Dion; Canoe Art, featuring canoes wrapped by artwork from a…

Chris Morel grew up in rural Maryland. When he was able to look for them, he sought out farms because he wanted to be outside and to be associated in some way with agriculture, which for so long was the backbone of the American economy and culture. He worked as an illustrator in Texas before moving to Taos, New Mexico, “because I needed to get outside to paint. I’m inspired by the landforms here—the differences in elevation, the geology, the Rockies and the desert. The scale is more vast than in the east and much of the landscape is uninhabited.” His home borders the 1.5-million-acre Carson National Forest “where you could hike 60 miles in almost any direction and never see another person.” He initially painted in watercolor but turned…

The works of painters Don Brackett and Jerry Jordan will join sculpture pieces created by Jim Eppler in a new three-artist show opening June 7 at Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The three artists use color—in paint and patina—to capture the Southwest in vivid, and yet also emotional, detail. “In the art business we are always following what is happening now, what sold now, what works we have now. However, Jerry Jordan and Don Brackett remind us that what drives them is not of the moment at all. They force us to dig in our heels, slow down and absorb our environment, immerse ourselves in our local culture, and most importantly observe what has become their vision of the Southwest,” says Cyndi Hall, associate director at the gallery.…

On June 7, works from 99 artists will be unveiled at one of the most anticipated Western events of the year during the Prix de West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Artists will come from far and wide to offer their artistic perspectives as they converge on Oklahoma City, which is not far from the geographic center of the contiguous United States in Lebanon, Kansas. From Washington to Florida, Maine to California, Oklahoma City serves as the crossroads for Western art. And though the artists come from different places, with different backgrounds and create art in different styles and mediums, they are all united in one thing: their endless fascination with the American West. “Our 47th annual Prix de West exhibition and sale is…

March 29 and 30, the Briscoe Western Art Museum hosted its Collectors Summit and Opening Weekend for the 2019 Night of Artists sale and exhibition. The San Antonio, Texas-based event was its largest to date, with nearly 280 works of art available by 80 of the most revered Western artists working today. During the opening weekend more than 900 artists, sponsors and guests gathered for the festivities, helping to push this year’s sales total to $1.85 million. “This year’s artists stepped up their game and sent us their best works,” says Michael Duchemin, the president and CEO of the Briscoe. “The show is strong and the buyers responded with their purchases. We are closing in on selling 70 percent of the show and have no doubt we will reach our…