Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020/ No. 150 i Western Art Collector

“Fleeing Hell’s Fury speaks volumes to the wild and dangerous life of the early American cowboy. Nothing struck fear into his heart like an oncoming range fire driven by fierce winds or the stampede that ensued,” says artist Kim Wiggins. “Dark demons and fiery serpents seem to pursue and almost overshadow this panic-stricken band, yet they fight on riding hard as they pursue the path to safety, knowing only rain falling from the darkened sky above can quench the oncoming flames.” This major new work from Wiggins will be available at the Masters of the American West exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West.…

Howard Knight No material has a stronger connection to the West than leather. Cowboys rode on it, their ropes were braided with it, their boots were made from it and the cows in their care produced it. Artists and artisans have used leather in magnificent ways for centuries. One of those artists is Howard Knight, owner of Howard Knight Custom Leather, a shop that is continuing the long tradition of leather goods in the West, and also creating new traditions with contemporary creations. Knight, who works out of his studio in Stevensville, Montana, has an eye for perfection when it comes to design and technique, and every piece he creates is one of a kind. Recent works include briefcases, backpacks, cigar tubes, belts, wallets and even leather embellishments worked into…

Our collectors were born and raised in west Los Angeles and spent the first decades of their 52-year marriage in the hustle and bustle of the city. They began to realize that, if it was possible, they wanted to create a more rural lifestyle. One of the ironies of the Southern California metropolis is that rural living is close by. In 1990 they purchased and remodeled a Mexican style home in nearby Malibu Canyon and built facilities for two horses. “I was an upper-level dressage competitor,” she says. “When I stopped competing I didn’t ride for a year and later became interested in horse camping. I got a Rocky Mountain horse and began to go off on camping excursions with my friends. At about that time we saw Lisa Gordon’s…

The first wagon train reached Northern California in 1844 at the end of a months-long journey from Missouri. Today, traveling at the speed limit on interstate highways, it takes a little more than a day. Many of the wagon trains didn’t travel on Sundays, perhaps giving the settlers a chance to admire the beauty of the land they were working so arduously to cross. Today, set on getting from point A to point B, we miss what’s in between. Derek Buckner, who, for many years, had a studio along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, found beauty in the way the light played on the industrial buildings and bridges and the way it reflected off the oil-slicked water of the canal. He also found beauty in the freeways engineered to get…

California undeniably elicits Western sentiments. As a frontier state, the culture Cof ranching, exploration and the cowboy life spreads rapidly through the land and its history. Californians and visitors alike will find no shortage of galleries, events, artists and organizations that conjure these Western sensibilities, from portrayals of our country’s national parks to depictions of bronco busters, wildlife and Native American scenes. Located in the massive metropolitan city of Los Angeles is Maxwell Alexander Gallery, which, in addition to its collection of contemporary realism, specializes in historic Western works and Southwest landscapes. The Autry Museum of the American West in LA’s Griffith Park features galleries filled with Native American art and cultural materials, film memorabilia, historic firearms, paintings, interactive areas and more. The museum also hosts numerous Western art events throughout…

The annual Wildlife Discovery exhibition at Trailside Galleries in Jackson, Wyoming, is a celebration of the natural world, in particular the mammals that inhabit North America. There are a variety of species from around the globe featured, but these animals—elk, deer and bears—tend to captivate because of their local proximity. The exhibition, which will run February 17 through 29, will include both paintings and sculpture by artists such as Ken Carlson, Veryl Goodnight, Shawn Gould, Bonnie Marris, Ralph Oberg, Ezra Tucker, Kent Ullberg and Sarah Woods. “Wildlife art continues to be one of the most collected genres of art in the country,” the gallery explains. “With the heightened awareness of climate change and fragile ecosystems, the genre has taken on a whole new dimension, as artists strive not only to create…

The top Western artists in the country will once again come together in California for the Masters of the American West exhibition as it returns to the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles on February 8. The show, recognized as one of the most important Western events of the year, will kick off with nearly 65 artists, each one a master of their medium. Masters of the American West will not only highlight artists working in a more traditional Western approach, but also shine a bright spotlight on artists who are working in a contemporary style, one that pushes the envelope on what Western art is or can be. This pairing of traditional and contemporary brings out some fascinating pairings: from the classic technique of Len Chmiel…

When Laurie Winters, executive director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art, told Tom Uttech she wanted to put together a retrospective exhibition of his paintings, he invited her to his studio in a converted barn. “We pulled out old paintings,” he recalled, “and many of them were full of barn dirt. I was stunned, though. They were better than I remembered!” Tom Uttech: Into the Woods, his first full career retrospective, recently completed its run at the museum in West Bend, Wisconsin. One of the early paintings, A Painting for Jean Sibelius, 1963-65, has the frontality and heightened color that continues to animate his work today. Uttech had discovered the music of the Finnish composer that was “absolutely the soundtrack to my life up north.” For decades, he would travel…

This past October, Western American art lost its greatest champion, Peter H. Hassrick. One of the most important American art historians of his time, no one worked more passionately to bring international attention to Western American art. This unparalleled passion combined with a singular intellect inspired a multitude of influential exhibitions, lectures and publications, all of which Hassrick produced while leading some of the nation’s top museums and institutions to financial and programmatic success. Hassrick quite literally “wrote the book”—in his case, books (more than 50)—on many Western American artists including Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Alexander Phimister Proctor, Ernest L. Blumenschein, John Mix Stanley and others. Known for decades as the authority on the life and art of Remington, Hassrick developed a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s known oils,…

Now open at the Albany Museum of Art in Albany, Georgia, is Looking at America and Painting How I Want, What I Want and How I See It. The exhibition will feature the work of Dean Mitchell, the prominent Florida painter who has won countless awards at both Western and contemporary art shows around the country. Known for his watercolor works, the exhibition will also feature Mitchell’s acrylic paintings. “I’m looking for freedom regardless of painting styles and labels imposed on artists in regards to race and ethnic origins,” Mitchell says, “total freedom to explore my full potential as an artist.” “His poetic urban and rural scenes are rich in tone, but vibrate with the desolation of so much of America’s landscapes,” says curator Didi Dunphy. “Beautifully rendered, deprived neighborhoods…

JANUARY January 23 SKINNER INC. American & European Works of Art Boston, MA – (617) 350-5400, www.skinnerinc.com January 25-26 MESA CONVENTION CENTER Brian Lebel’s Mesa Old West Show & Auction Mesa, AZ – (480) 779-9378 www.oldwestevents.com January 26-May 17 CROCKER ART MUSEUM Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette Sacramento, CA – (916) 808-7000 www.crockerart.org Through January 26 NATIONAL WESTERN STOCK SHOW Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale Denver, CO – (303) 291-2567 www.coorswesternart.com Through January 31 MOUNTAIN TRAILS GALLERY Made in Arizona Sedona, AZ – (928) 282-3225 www.mountaintrailssedona.com FEBRUARY February 6 DOWNTOWN SCOTTSDALE Gold Palette ArtWalks: Western Week Scottsdale, AZ www.scottsdalegalleries.com Through February 7 MARK SUBLETTE MEDICINE MAN GALLERY Stephen C. Datz – Canyons, Buttes, & Beyond Tucson, AZ – (800) 422-9382 www.medicinemangallery.com February 7-28 INSIGHT GALLERY Daniel Gerhartz – Solo…

Artists of different traditions and backgrounds reflect and shape our view of the American West, land of the rancher and the cowboy. So, when I was given the opportunity to offer collectors the western paintings of two successful American artists working during the Great Depression and World War II, I could not resist. The resulting exhibition is an exploration of the paintings of Adolf Dehn (1895-1968) in Colorado from 1938 into the 1960s and Peter Hurd (1904-1984) in New Mexico from 1928 forward. The 25 paintings hung in our gallery create a kind of a conversation between two artists who both captured the authentic West. These paintings provide more than a comparison and contrast of two very different Western landscapes; they are a narrative of an artist’s journey. Looking outward…

The nature essayist John Burroughs (1837-1921) wrote, “He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.” Josh Elliott says, “I am fascinated with snow because of the challenge it presents, the moods it can convey and the fact that we have snow the better part of every year here in Montana. I can paint snow in August if I want to!” He strives to capture the “truth of nature” in such paintings as The New Calf. In the snow and mist, details begin to disappear and clouds of breath from the cattle attest to the cold. Two cattle gaze back at the painter and the calf rests in the dirt. Known for his often sunny snow scenes, even…

Eye to eye Opening February 10 at Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is David Frederick Riley’s newest show, Eye to Eye: Portraits of the West. The one-man show will feature Riley’s newest large-scale works of Western wildlife. “The work for my next show is focusing even further on that interaction of the subject and the viewer. By using the canvas as a frame of awareness the subject enters into, it sets the tone for the interaction. Maybe the subject is bold and occupies the middle of the space, or is timid and creeps in from the side, but the composition is the foundation to build the emotion from,” the painter says. “I then use variations in the hardness of edges, the saturation of color and the contrast in…

Cowboys & Cowgirls Dennis Ziemienski has always admired the work of Maynard Dixon and Edward Hopper as well as the great illustrators of the early 20th century. In his successful career as an illustrator, he knew he had to get the story across as simply and as beautifully as the designers of early travel posters and fruit crate labels. “They were meant to attract people,” he says. “I started doing compositions like that and it worked out well.” In his Cowboys & Cowgirls exhibition, which opens February 9 at Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, his paintings give the viewer the elements of a story and let the viewer take it from there. In Asking for Directions there are two major means of transportation in the West—a horse and a…

David Kiehm takes inspiration for his artwork from the natural world. “From my earliest days as a boy running through woods and fields, I have been drawn to beautiful landscapes and the creatures that called those places home,” he shares. “As I got older and discovered art and my need to create, it was just natural that I concentrated on wildlife.” Kiehm’s travels around the country have exposed him to many different and exciting new landscapes and wildlife. “Not only is the flora and fauna new, but the lights and the mood it creates are also exhilarating,” he says. “As an artist, I find capturing the time of day, the wind and the smell of a scene just as important as the subject. I want to paint water to look…

On December 10, Christie’s offered Obidders some of the most iconic photographs ever taken by one of the most famous photographers to ever live, Ansel Adams. Eighty-six lots were offered and 86 lots sold, realizing a total of nearly $1.1 million. The New York City sale benefited the endowment for the Center for Creative Photography, which was co-founded by Adams in 1975 at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The center began with the archives of five living master photographers: Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Frederick Sommer, but the collection has since grown to include 270 archival collections. Among these are some of the most recognizable names in 20th century North American photography: Lola Álvarez Bravo, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand. Altogether there are…

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If you ask an artist to explain the meaning behind their artwork, the emotions they intend it to elicit or the metaphors behind the little nuanced elements, the answer will reside on a spectrum. On one end, there’s explicit meaning and intention—the artist knows exactly what statement they hope to make, and on the other end there’s complete open-endedness. For Daniel Gerhartz, he swims in the deep end of the latter half of the pool. “I would rather leave it open. Everyone has their own history to bring in terms of seeing art. Everyone brings all of their past into it…The more I say the more confused the viewer gets. How that piece hit me is not how it’s going to hit someone else,” he says. “I know from experience…

Selections from one of the great private collections of Western art, the Eddie Basha Collection in Chandler, Arizona, sold at a Bonhams’ auction November 25 in Los Angeles, achieving a sales total of more than $3.8 million. The top 10 featured just three artists: Howard Terpning, John Clymer and Tom Lovell. The three artists, as well as all the artists in the rest of the sale, all shared two things: they are were all members of Cowboy Artists of America, and all were friends of Basha, a prominent and colorful character in the world of Western art. Basha, who owned a chain of grocery stores and was at one point a gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, died in 2013. His collection, which contains thousands of works of art, is on public…

Voice of a setting sun Ed Mell, the great modernist painter of Arizona, will have a new solo show beginning February 21 at Mark Sublette’s Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. Influenced by Andrew Dasburg and Raymond Jonson, the artist is doing to Arizona what those artists did to New Mexico—he’s glorifying the state one brushstroke at a time. New works in the show include Voice of a Setting Sun, a magnificent sunset image of distant mesas standing heroically under the glowing early-evening light, and Cholla Symmetry, one of his famous desert still lifes that features abstract forms and streamlined design of its forms and composition. In Canyon Bend, Mell turns his attention to a canyon stacked with millions of years of sedimentary layers as a river winds its way…

Elements of sporting life and some of the best in wildlife art come together for the annual Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout the three-day event visitors can partake in a range of activities both sporting and art-related, like the DockDogs Competition where dogs of all kinds and skill levels compete in various water jumping competitions, and the sheep and duck herding demo, as well as art previews, quick draws, speed sculpts and more. An exciting new element to the event this year is A Big Night for Small Works happening on Wednesday, February 12. The ticketed event is a juried show featuring 50 small works from SEWE artists. The featured artists for the miniatures show, Wes and Rachelle Siegrist, will do live demonstrations and paintings, and guests…

For Tom Fuller, passion is the driving force behind every single masterpiece. His work is what, and who, he is. Fuller is dedicated to his calling, which is evidenced by the tremendous number of hours he spends on paintings inspired by God’s inspiration, family, friends and owners. His work is focused, detailed and not produced in volume. Through his work, Fuller depicts the definitive nature of each cowboy, cowgirl, horse and landscape of the West. “Tom Fuller is someone to start collecting now,” says collector Grace Snidow. “His artwork helps the viewer hear the thunder under the horse’s hooves, and the smell of the dust and leather, and lastly, see the twinkle in the cowboy’s life from living his life well spent. Tom is a good man and an amazing…