Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021/ No. 162 i Western Art Collector

After 30 years in the art business, Blue Rain Gallery owner Leroy Garcia knows art and artists, which serves as a great foundation to the meaningful conversations he’s presenting on the gallery’s first podcast. Blue Rain Gallery Podcast, which premiered in October 2020, features intimate sit-down interviews with artists as they reflect on their lives and the state of the arts. Guests on the show have so far included Western painters Hyrum Joe, Jim Vogel, Billy Schenck and Doug West, as well as other artists. “I was never really a fan of podcasts before this,” Garcia admits from the gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I was more of an audiobook kind of person as I was on my commute. But I was aware of podcasts like Joe Rogan’s or,…

Opening February 13 at the Booth Western Art Museum, is Vaquero Legacies & Diverse Descendants, a photography show that traces the many legacies left behind by the first cowboys, who came to the Americas in the late 1600s.Legaciesbrings to the forefront the charros of Mexico, Black Rodeos and cowboy culture, Indian Relay Races and Rodeos, the paniolos of Hawaii and many more rich expressions of this deeply Western tradition. The exhibition will feature dozens of photographers, including Nadine Levin and Jay Dusard. It runs through July 11.…

It’s one of the most famous Western artworks by one of the celebrated Western artists. It’s available in posters and prints, and it appears frequently in many books, museum exhibitions and magazines articles. And yet there is a detail in Frederic Remington’s The Stampede that many people miss. Looking through the rain and the twilight of the scene, and the chaos of a full-blown cattle stampede, right there in the middle of the painting is a Black cowboy charging into the maelstrom. Remington wasn’t the first artist to depict a Black figure in a piece of Western artwork, nor would he be the last. And today a new group of artists is painting the West as the diverse place it was—and still is today—and they are highlighting rich opportunities for…

Andrew Wyeth said, “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” While many artists see the winter landscape as full of hope for spring, others see it as a subject in itself, in which the bare bones of the landscape are revealed. Jeremy Browne writes, “I have found that painting a winter landscape allows me to focus all of my attention on the light and mood of my painting, and not focus on the foliage of a tree. This allows me to explore new ways to produce interesting lighting effects in my landscapes.” Moonlight often gives his landscapes an ethereal glow. In Across the Fields, however, the…

Eric Bowman admits “I never thought I would get into Western art.” His biography at Medicine Man Gallery explains Bowman had “various art-related jobs such as silk screen T-shirt printer or surfboard airbrush technician, which led to a lengthy and successful career as a freelance illustrator…” “I thought Western art was very highly detailed and very highly researched,” he says, “and I was trying to get away from detail. But then I realized I could do it in my own style. I’ve always had an affinity for the desert. The intense light is balanced with the long shadows of early morning and late afternoon. I wanted to portray the figure on a horse in the landscape—the iconic solitude of the horse and rider.” Bowman’s horse and rider paintings depict the…

The abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell wrote, “Art is an experience, not an object.” When Theodore Waddell was studying painting in New York in the early 1960s, Motherwell was one of his idols. Today, Waddell paints the West in an abstracted, impressionistic way. It’s the experience of the West that animates his work, not careful description. As a rancher and cattlemen, he knows his animals. In the catalogue to his current exhibition at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he writes, “I can’t tell you anything about clouds, horses or bison that you can’t see for yourself. But I can tell you how much I love them and how much I love the West. To me, it’s spiritual.” He paints with a cold wax medium and pigment, a…

While many of us are looking to this new year with hopeful hearts and a fresh start, there still remains a lot of uncertainty. Art events, such as with the Booth Western Art Museum, are still responding with safer, virtual viewing options. The Booth canceled their annual Gala extravaganza, and instead are offering the virtual event For the Love of Art 2021, described as “an art auction wrapped in a variety show.” The museum has partnered with Hindman Auctions to bring 80 lots of paintings, sculpture and collectibles, such as jewelry and books, to the safety of everyone’s home. There will be a silent auction and live auction, all readily available through Zoom. Top artists in the West such as Tom Dorr, Z.S. Liang, Kim Wiggins and Gary Niblett have…

Every year the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition reminds us of the beauty of wildlife art, as well as the immense importance of conservation. The three-day event is one of the longest running of its kind, connecting visitors with wildlife and nature through fine art, conservation education and sporting demonstrations. Artists, exhibitors and experts in wildlife and nature art from across the country flock to Charleston, South Carolina. “Collectors can always expect extraordinary original works from SEWE artists. In any given year, it may be a singular piece or a full body of work, but there is always an artist who surprises me [with] work that you know took all of his or her talent and emotion,” says SEWE executive director John Powell. Dozens of talented artists have made their way into…

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. PRICE RANGE INDICATORS Check out and compare each contemporary Western artist’s prices and see what you can expect to pay for their small, medium and large works. You can also see how the artist’s works have been increasing in value as they have become more widely collected. 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…

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner wrote in his book The Sound of Mountain Water, “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.” Ideally, wilderness can only be looked into from its edge, an area without modern human intervention, where its flora can grow and its fauna can roam. Two bear cubs follow their mother in Bruce Cheever’s Follow the Leader. They are almost incidental in the vast landscape, traversing the line between light and shadow. The rocky rim of the canyon is strewn with fallen trees that will eventually return to the earth. The scene is…

While other destinations in the country are still blanketed in snow and ice in February, Arizona awakens for an early spring with gorgeous weather, mild temperatures and clear skies. The element that pops for visitors and Arizonans alike, though, is the color in nature as the desert comes back to life. It’s vivid and radiant, and it spills out of nature like paint from a can. Legacy Gallery is asking visitors to think of the color with its new show The Painted West, opening February 12 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The group show will feature works from some of the gallery’s biggest Western artists: Bill Anton, G. Russell Case, Glenn Dean, John Moyers, Terri Kelly Moyers, Kyle Polzin, Jason Rich, Matt Smith and Morgan Weistling. Each artist will be presenting five…

Mountain Trails Gallery in Park City, Utah, hosts an upcoming group show featuring works by Mark Gibson, Amy Lay, Tal Walton and Simon Winegar. Bearing the title The Iconic West, the exhibition takes viewers through various imagery reminiscent of the West—a modest forest of aspens, a bright red barn, mustangs against mountainous backdrops and prairies of gold. From Gibson’s signature portraits of teepees illuminated from within, to the flowing brushstrokes of Lay’s wildlife scenes, The Iconic West enchants us. “My pieces in this show are geared toward seasons in the West,” says Winegar. “Many of them are farms and natural landscapes that feature a specific time of year: pumpkins in an autumn setting, frost that clings to the trees in the wintertime, the verdant greens of fragrant alfalfa fields. Things…

Don Woodard likes to call his work “fine art in wood,” and he’s not wrong with that title. His primary subject matter includes wildlife, landscapes, ranch scenes, sunsets, Western events and images of Hawaii. He began creating his style of artwork about 20 years ago and has participated in nationally juried art shows since 2012. Woodard’s work has received numerous awards and has been purchased by collectors for their homes, cabins, private offices, a hospital collection, bank and hotel lobbies as well as fundraisers for the Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. After a very successful 45-year career—first creating commercial signs, then transforming his company into an exhibit company, designing and constructing exhibits for trade shows, visitor centers and hall of fames—he is now…

While Desert Caballeros Western Museum first began their journey in 1960, their true path was revealed in 1972 after a fire burned down the building. Upon rebuilding, part-time Wickenburg residents Aiken and Jane Fisher saw an opportunity to change the museum into a center for Western art and Western history rather than just focusing on local history. The couple went on to fund the core of the Western art holdings at the museum. Since then, the museum grew to include other generous benefactors, and now have a permanent collection including works from well-known Western artists such as Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell and Maynard Dixon. Inspired by their many gifts over the years, the museum is showing their thanks and praise in the form of the exhibition Collectors’ Legacy: Wickenburg…

Heritage Auctions hosted its December 3 American Art sale to a robust crowd of buyers through its online platform, by telephone and absentee. The auction house, which has its own system through its website, saw “massive amounts of online bidding,” according to Alissa Ford, Heritage’s director of Western art. “Not only that, but we found this season we registered quite a few new bidders.” The market for Western art continued to show is strength with Thomas Moran’s Mountain Lion in Grand Canyon (Lair of the Mountain Lion) becoming the top lot of the day at $471,000. The second-highest earner was the dynamic painting The Best in the Bunch by William R. Leigh, which sold within estimate at $312,500. “The Western section of the sale only had one unsold painting,” says Ford.…

JANUARY January 21-May 9 TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART The Wyeths: Three Generations | Works from the Bank of America Collection Tucson, AZ – (520) 624-2333 www.tucsonmuseumofart.org January 23 DELTA PHOENIX MARRIOTT MESA 31st Annual Mesa Old West Auction Mesa, AZ – (480) 779-9378, www.oldwestevents.com Through January 31 MARK SUBLETTE MEDICINE MAN GALLERY Stephen C. Datz: New Works Tucson, AZ – (520) 722-7798 www.medicinemangallery.com Through January 2021 SID RICHARDSON MUSEUM In a Different Light: Winslow Homer & Frederic Remington Fort Worth, TX – (817) 332-6554 www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org FEBRUARY Opens February 5 INSIGHT GALLERY Bruce Greene Fredericksburg, TX – (830) 997-9920 www.insightgallery.com Through February 7 ARIZONA-SONORA DESERT MUSEUM International Society of Scratchboard Artists Tucson, AZ – (520) 883-2702, www.desertmuseum.org February 11-16 PALM BEACH CONVENTION CENTER Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show West…

Oleg Stavrowsky, the illustrator turned artist who lit up the Western world with his contemporary designs and modernist interpretations of the Southwest, died on May 15, 2020. He was 93 years old, and painting until the very end. “He was a good friend, and I always admired him for his authenticity,” says painter Rocky Hawkins, whose career overlapped Stavrowsky’s in Washington and Santa Fe, New Mexico. “He painted genuine paintings in that remarkable style of his. He used a lot of texture and color, and the resulting work was very vibrant. We shared an admiration for abstract expressionism, and you could see his love for that movement in his work. He liked the West, but he also took risks and went beyond the norm.” Born in 1927 in Harlem, New…

The cowboy occupies a strange place within American culture. On one hand, the cowboy is part of the mythology of the West, a fable of man’s connection to the land and the creatures in it. On the other, cowboys are not some dusty old book on a shelf somewhere. They are alive, here and now—they’re saddling up their horses as you read this very sentence. Bruce Greene paints both cowboys: the ones of our imaginations and the blue-collar workers out there tending the pastures today. And in both versions, the Texas artist honors them with every brushstroke. “As long as people eat beef we’ll have cowboys. Those guys are out there, whether you’ve seen them or not,” he says. “I’ve ridden with them and I consider them friends. The American…

Ongoing now at D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York City is American Art for the Public: Mural Studies and Paintings, 1930-1945, an exhibition that explores public art during a crucial period of American art history. This fascinating period between the Great Depression and the end of World War II served as the backdrop for the Whitney Museum’s hugely successful exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945, which itself helped offer context to the D. Wigmore show. “…[Vida Americana] made me wonder how the Mexican muralists, who were all revolutionary, helped America reimagine itself. To examine that question, I have put together an exhibition of American murals and paintings from the 1930s and 1940s for consideration,” says Deedee Wigmore, owner of the gallery. Wigmore uses the Works Progress…

More than 60 of the top Western artists in the country will have new work available at the Masters of the American West exhibition starting on February 27 at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The show is one of the most important museum exhibitions of the year, and this year’s show is expected to once again speak to the quality of artists, the diversity of talent and the exceptional level of storytelling that permeates within Western art. This will be the first Masters, and hopefully the last, held during the ongoing pandemic— last year’s show missed the first Covid wave by a matter of weeks—so the show organizers have had to make some changes to protect museum visitors, patrons, staff, collectors and artists. Much of…

Visions of the West: Highlights from the Bloomberg Collection surveys a crossroads of American history—the increasing industrialization and urbanization of the country, against that of the wild, open freedom of the West. During late 19th and early 20th centuries, stories of the American West became especially exciting, even exotic, for those dwelling on the eastern side of the country. Through the many Western paintings within the diverse, rich collection of John and Toni Bloomberg, the San Diego Museum of Art presents a series of fantastic depictions of the West, both real and idealized, by such artists as Eanger Irving Couse, Nicolai Fechin, Joseph Henry Sharp, Frederic Remington, Walter Ufer, Charles M. Russell, Maynard Dixon and more. “We wanted to look at [these paintings from the Bloomberg Collection] in the context…

The organizers of the Jackson Hole Art Auction have watched as internet bidding has increased in sales year after year. They then watched those numbers go up almost exponentially during the pandemic as collectors grew even more comfortable with bidding from afar. The ease and comfort of internet bidding has resulted in the inaugural Wyoming Art Auction on February 20 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “After toying with this idea for a good amount of time, it was obvious this was a great time to host an online-only sale,” says Madison Webb, the auction director at the Jackson Hole Art Auction, which is presenting the sale. “And when we looked at our calendar, February was wide open, so it seemed perfect for a Wyoming sale.” The sale will be held entirely…

John Clymer paintings have always been a hot commodity in the Western world. But recent sales at a number of New York and East Coast auctions has shown how Clymer’s works have risen among collectors of all varieties. Clymer works hit $468,000 in 2018, $416,000 in 2019 and $400,000 as recent as October 2020. His pieces are routinely hitting their marks or surpassing them as they trend upward in a very exciting way through the market. Then came December 11. It was Sotheby’s American art sale in New York. The auction house had a magnificent Clymer action scene with an effective and simple title, Attack. The image showed Native American fighters ambushing several covered wagons. Estimates, $100,000 to $150,000, were modest for a Clymer, and also apparently very conservative—after furious…