Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025/No. 215 i Western Art Collector

Welcome to the July issue of Western Art Collector! This month our eye is on sculpture and its impact within Western art. It was just a few issues ago that Western Art Collector had its first sculpture on the cover. It was a bronze by John Coleman called Victory! Plenty Coups. You can hear John Coleman’s incredible story in Episode 31 of our podcast, the American Art Collective. His passion for his craft will inspire you. (Other sculptors on the show include Curt Mattson, Bryce Pettit, Dave LaMure Jr., Jeremy Bradshaw, Roxanne Swentzell, Ed Natiya and LaQuincey Reed.) Evidence suggests that sculpture predates paintings as the first type of art. Why is that important now? First, as a collector you should have both in your collection. Second, while we love…

In April, the Bosque Arts Center announced the acquisition and installation of Bruce Greene’s bronze monument Goats in the Garden. The 1,200-pound piece now sits at the entrance to the center in Clifton, Texas, in Bosque County. Greene, who lives in Clifton, was on hand for the unveiling and installation. The monument was commissioned and donated to the center by Roland and Joyce Jones. It is a remake of a piece Greene did while serving as an artist in residence at the center early in his career. “I was dusting some of the sculptures off one day and I looked at the original Goats in Garden. I thought, ‘Hmm, wouldn’t that look good if it were 5 feet tall?’ So I called Bruce,” Joyce Jones relates. She told him, “She’d…

In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the exhibition The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925. The exhibition, at one of the most prestigious art venues in the world, was a watershed moment for Western sculpture. “The American West—imagined or real, past or present—is an ever-shifting, endlessly fascinating place. Our visions of the American West are often mediated through words and images—literature and the popular press, paintings and photographs, and of course film and television,” wrote Thomas P. Campbell, then the director of the museum, in the exhibition’s catalog. “Sculpture, too, and particularly the bronze statuette, has played a significant role in creating a perception of place and of time, often fixed in the Old West.” For some fans of Western art, the exhibition offered a welcome feeling of validation…

239 Brinton Road, Big Horn, WY 82833 (307) 672-3173, thebrintonmuseum.org Located on the historic Quarter Circle A Ranch at the foot of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, the Brinton Museum presents art, history and nature through the lens of the American West. The museum features an impressive permanent collection of Western and Native American art, historic photography, and contemporary works by regional and national artists. Its state-of-the-art, environmentally sensitive Forrest E. Mars Jr. building houses galleries, a museum store and sweeping mountain views. The original 1892 Brinton Ranch House offers guided tours with furnishings and fine art from Bradford Brinton’s private collection. Educational programs, changing exhibitions, and events like the annual Bighorn Rendezvous Quickdraw and the summer Annual Gala engage visitors of all ages. The Brinton Museum is a nonprofit institution committed…

Kicking off the exciting summer season in Wyoming is the Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show & Sale opening July 17 at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum. This year’s show will include more than 200 works from 56 talented Western artists. The annual event, now in its 43rd year, is timed with Cheyenne Frontier Days, one of the most popular rodeos in North America. “I’m really excited about this year’s show,” says Amanda Marshall, the art show’s organizer. “I am fortunate to see the art as it comes in and it’s all been so beautiful. It’s going to be a good year.” Artists include Susie Hyer, Jennifer Johnson, Dan Knepper, Ann Hanson, Chris Navarro, Marlin Rotach and many others. Marshall notes that the show will have both traditional…

Painter Kathryn Stedham leads a double life in Santa Fe, New Mexico: She’s either in the studio painting, and all that entails, or she’s competing in Western dressage, which requires a harmonious performance between horse and rider. Someone could devote their entire life to either, and Stedham is committed to both. “I definitely have both feet in the West,” she says. “And they’re covered in earth.” This love of the West is reflected in her riding, but also in her artwork, which will be on display at a new show opening July 25 at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe. Some of the new paintings were inspired by recent travels around the Southwest, including to Wagon Mound in Northern New Mexico. The butte, which resembles a Conestoga wagon, was a…

Presenting a fresh mix of bronze animal sculptures, Legacy Gallery is hosting A Weekend with Paul Rhymer, where the artist will also be demonstrating his sculptural process. The show is ideally located at Legacy Gallery’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, location, where there’s room for large structure assemblies. “Like many artists, I try to bring a variety of types and sizes of work for openings,” Rhymer explains. “I often make custom, one-of-a-kind pieces for my openings at Legacy. Some are small tabletop pieces; some are large structures meant to be big landscape features.” This year, Rhymer is also adding in some furniture and ladder totems to round out the new collection. “For many years,” that artist continues, “I tried putting together a series of small works with a theme. Last year’s…

Edward Gonzales’ New Mexico roots run beyond deep. His mother’s family arrived in the United States from Mexico around 1908 and settled in the southern part of the state. His father’s family, of Spanish descent, came to Nuevo México in 1598, where they put down stakes in the Llano Estacado, a region that lies on the southern end of the Great Plains. Relatives still live in that remote area of New Mexico. It is the people of this place that Gonzales often paints, and his depictions of Hispanic families are a unique signature of the artist. “I was trying to create a new iconography in Western art representing families that had been part of the Western landscape for generations, but doing it with a contemporary thrust of the colors and…

Coeur d’Alene Galleries is ecstatic to feature the wildlife art of Dustin Van Wechel in an upcoming solo show, Canvasing the West. “The artist puts an emphasis on creating a strong sense of light and movement, often incorporating environmental elements to enhance the emotional connection with collectors,” says gallery owner Buddy Le. Le goes on to mention that this approach results in “paintings that are both visually striking and emotionally resonant,” which is also the case for Wechel’s new collection, amounting to seven impressive wildlife pieces. “The overarching theme of this body of work is to take the art lover on a journey of the American West, filtered through my own romanticized vision of my experiences in the wilds of North America,” Van Wechel explains. “But more subtly, this body…

Every year, Oil Painters of America, the prestigious organization dedicated to traditional oil painting, holds a juried exhibition focused primarily on classical Western art, created by some of the preeminent artists of the day. This year, nearly 115 representational oil paintings will be on display, all of which have gone through a rigorous selection process. The juror of awards for the 2025 exhibition is OPA Master Signature artist Edward Kucera, known for his acute attention to detail and mastery of color. The exhibition opens on Friday, July 11, with an awards ceremony where Kucera will announce the winning artists. The following morning, on July 12, Kucera will conduct a painting demonstration, and that evening he will conduct an informal tour of the exhibition. “Collectors can expect to see paintings produced…

1 Western art soars at Bonhams’ American art sale On April 30, Bonhams’ American art auction racked up $6.5 million in sales. A significant piece of the sale came from Western art, including Frank Tenney Johnson’s Mountain Meadows (est. $800/1,200,000), which sold for $914,000. It tied for the top lot with a Paul Manship bronze. Other artists in the top 10 lots included James Earle Fraser, Thomas Moran, N.C. Wyeth, Victor Higgins and Marsden Hartley. “The results of this recent auction proved to us that there is an enduring and strong appetite for iconic portrayals of the West by America’s most coveted artists, such as James Earle Fraser, Frank Tenney Johnson, Victor Higgins and Thomas Moran,” says Aaron Anderson, American specialist with Bonhams. “In many respects, so much of American art…

In late May I was in New Mexico for Native Elements, a show we sponsored for its inaugural year. Although the show was in Santa Fe, I flew to Albuquerque and then planned on taking a shuttle up to Santa Fe, which is so walkable and friendly for pedestrians that I rarely rent a car. I landed in New Mexico with plenty of time to spare, so I did something I had been meaning to do for years: I took the Santa Fe Rail Runner for the 64-mile journey into Santa Fe. The train is not long—an engine and four double-decker passenger cars—and yet it made a statement with its roadrunner imagery painted on the side as it glided into the station in Albuquerque. Seated on the second level as…

Other than actor Sean Connery, few people were as instrumental in defining the look, mannerism and suave style of secret agent James Bond than illustrator Robert McGinnis. The Ohio-born artist worked on the Bond franchise early in its development and it remained an important part of his studio and legacy, even as he turned to paperback book covers, nudes and, for a large segment of his career, paintings of the American West. McGinnis, whose career started in the 1950s and continued for more than seven decades, died March 10 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 99 years old. McGinnis’ art journey began when he moved from Ohio to California to work for Disney, but World War II cut his time there short. He served as a Merchant Marine…

A famous axiom says that every story about a man is also a story about the man’s father. Consider the work of Lincoln Borglum, a relatively unknown sculptor from the mid-20th century. Lincoln was destined to be an engineer, and yet he ventured into the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1933. He was there to work for his father, sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was creating one of the most famous works of colossal art on the planet, the mountain-sized heads of four American presidents carved into granite—Mount Rushmore. Gutzon worked on the project from 1927 until his death in 1941. Although, the monument was largely completed at the time of Gutzon’s death, Lincoln stepped up to close the project out and then serve as Mount Rushmore’s first superintendent. When…

Home to Yellowstone National Park and known for its wide-open spaces and cowboy culture, Wyoming is, without question, a cornucopia of inspirational opportunities for Western artists. The Wyoming landscape has been a popular subject matter for artists, with its grand scenery that also includes the Grand Teton National Park, Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area and Devils Tower National Monument, among many others. The famous landscape photographer Ansel Adams, for example, spent time capturing scenes from Grand Teton and Snake River. Thomas Moran was another artist who surveyed the Yellowstone area and was known for his sketches of Green River, as well as other areas of Wyoming. Found in Moran’s journal, and available through the Yellowstone National Park Service website, is a description of the artist’s time in the park: “For…

shannon@shannonmarieartistry.com www.shannonmarieartistry.com @shannon_marie_artistry Shannon Marie Schacht is a self-taught, professional wildlife artist. Originally from Maine, Schacht now resides in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where her creativity is inspired daily by the natural surroundings. Schacht’s work is best described as contemporary realism with dramatic, yet intimate compositions. These are not your typical wildlife paintings. She has the ability and gift of conveying the personality of animals that is instantly recognizable and endearing to her collectors. Schacht’s artwork reflects her deep connection with animals, and she works hard at creating these visions with each brush stroke. She is represented by West Lives On Gallery in Jackson Hole and Thomas Anthony Gallery in Park City, Utah. She has a large following of collectors across the globe.…

Beginning July 12, Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Pasadena, California, will host the annual Summer Small Works show. Made up of dozens of artists, the show offers artwork at appealing sizes and prices from some of the top artists working today. This show, as well as the gallery’s Black Friday show, also reveals the depth and diversity of the Maxwell Alexander stable. There is a little bit of everything: figures from Eric Bowman, stark desert landscapes from David Griffin, wildlife from James Morgan and Donna Howell-Sickles, contemporary Western works from Howard Post and Phyllis Shafer, stylized cowboys from Xiang Zhang and Dan Stovall, and Pop Art from Duke Beardsley. All of it together celebrates the West, the people who live there and the places they call home. Key works in the…

Dennis Ziemienski freely admits he’s a cloud guy. “My head’s always been in the clouds,” he says. “Always.” It’s fitting then that his newest show at Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is titled Under the Western Skies and filled with magnificent images of clouds. One of these paintings, the largest in the show at 72 by 84 inches, is Westbound, showing a train traversing the land under a banner of glorious blue clouds hiding a golden sunset. The artist says he was inspired by a photograph his daughter, and frequent model, took while on vacation. The painting was so large and the clouds were so abstract that Ziemienski painted the top three quarters of the painting upside down. Other pieces in the show include some of the most…

For Caleb Meyer, his sweeping Western landscapes and horizon line paintings have a constant theme: the light and feeling of a time and place. Meyer’s aptly titled show at Gallery Wild, In the Moment, is a continuation of this theme embodied in a collection of around 20 new paintings. “There’s something about Caleb Meyer’s work that just pulls you in,” says gallery owner Carrie Wild. “With bold palette knife strokes and thick oil paint, he brings the big skies and open spaces of the West right into the room. Meyer’s work not only portrays the physical landscape but also encapsulates the essence of Western outdoor culture, reflecting a deep reverence for the wild and untamed. This collection is a testament to his ability to translate the soul of the American…

The Brinton Museum is bringing award-winning and renowned Western artists to the annual Bighorn Rendezvous showcase and auction, now in its 10th year in Big Horn, Wyoming. This year, the public will see 16 artists featuring more than 40 works of art. Attendees can expect a similar schedule to past years, including a brunch, family-fun programming, a quickdraw event and the art auction. “This event draws fine art collectors from the region to meet and talk with accomplished artists of merit, and enjoy a day of all-things art at an outstanding world-class museum,” says Barbara McNab, curator of events. “Art mediums represented, for the most part, stay within two-dimensional media, with some exceptions being artists who work in bronze.” While artworks will be on display in the museum’s Jacomien Mars…

July 26 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction GRAND SIERRA RESORT AND CASINO Reno, NV – (208) 772-9009 www.cdaartauction.com July July 2025 Broadmoor Art Experience THE BROADMOOR Colorado Springs, CO – (719) 577-5744 www.broadmoorgalleries.com July 1-15 Dennis Ziemienski: Under the Western Skies ALTAMIRA FINE ART Jackson Hole, WY – (307) 739-4700 www.altamiraart.com July 4-14 Patricia A. Griffin: Avante Garde GALLERY WILD Jackson Hole, WY – (307) 203-2322 www.gallerywild.com Through July 5 Tres Pintores ACOSTA STRONG FINE ART Santa Fe, NM – (505) 982-2795 www.acostastrong.com July 5-26 American Plains Artists: Signature Show & Sale PRAIRIE ARTS CENTER − IMPACT GALLERY North Platte, NE – www.americanplainsartists.com July 12-26 Summer Small Works MAXWELL ALEXANDER GALLERY Pasadena, CA – (213) 275-1060 www.maxwellalexandergallery.com July 5-August 2 Kyle Ma, 25 in 2025 WILCOX GALLERY Jackson Hole, WY –…

1 Tim Cox nocturne now available from his New Mexico studio New Mexico painter Tim Cox recently completed a major new work from his studio, Wishing on a Star, which shows a pair of riders admiring a shooting star lighting up across the silent night sky. Cox, an emeritus member of the Cowboy Artists of America, is one of the most respected names in realist cowboy art in the country. The artist’s wife, Suzie Cox, calls the piece “a serene painting capturing a brief moment in time. “I personally fell in love with this piece during its creation, with the unique ambiance of the Western night sky,” she says. “Tim has captured a time of day that has a magnificent beauty but is rarely portrayed.” To make inquiries about this work,…

There are horse people who want to be artists and artists who want to be horse people. Rare is the combination of a naturally talented artist with decades of experience around horses. Sculptor Stephanie Revennaugh is that rare combination. “Knowing horses, they’re very emotional creatures and their communication is most often subtle,” Revennaugh says. “If you don’t understand that, if you don’t understand what the flick of an ear means, the posture, the shape of the nostril [all] says something. Horse people fully understand that language. It’s a language. Horse people are so picky about that [in artwork].” Revennaugh has loved horses since childhood. Prior to committing herself to a career in art, she was managing a barn—mucking stalls, grooming horses. The day prior to the interview for this story,…

1975 N. Highway 89, Jackson, WY 83001, (307) 733-6450, www.wilcoxgallery.com Wilcox Gallery’s founder and acclaimed artist, Jim Wilcox, represents more than 40 top contemporary representational and impressionist Western artists at its two Jackson Hole locations. Among these top artists, collectors will find a fine collection of Kyle Ma’s masterful diverse subjects. The quality of the work draws collectors like Wilcox to Kyle, but his story cements the draw. Many collectors have compared Ma’s art to Richard Schmid and other painting greats. Additional artists include Barry Eisenach, Tom Browning and Robert Duncan whose work lines the walls of Wilcox Gallery and Wilcox Gallery II with impressive Western art subjects. Their pieces speak to Native American culture, the cowboy lifestyle, landscapes and so much more. The gallery is set to host Ma’s…

Every summer, the Phippen Museum in Prescott, Arizona, hosts a two-month-long celebration of all things equine art. For many, the horse is a symbol of freedom, loyalty, hard work and the enduring spirit of the Western way of life. For others, horses mean something even deeper—a soulful kinship that’s been around as long as horses and humankind have lived and worked side by side. The annual Hold Your Horses! Exhibition & Sale, taking place this year from July 26 to September 28, highlights an array of remarkable artwork by some of the most prominent Western artists of the day, all of whom capture the tiny details of the equine form with dynamism and anatomical accuracy. This year’s show and sale will bring together the works of nearly 40 artists, including…

Artist Kyle Ma’s latest solo show, held at Wilcox Gallery II on the Jackson Hole Town Square in Wyoming, is made up of the places and experiences that have inspired the 25-year-old painter within the last year. Ma has made a name for himself as a painter who skillfully captures a wide range of subjects, many of them Western—think expansive canyons, grazing cattle, desert flora, old farm mills and more. With a deft and painterly hand, Ma creates florals, cityscapes, still lifes and figures that captivate viewers across the world. “People recognize Kyle’s talent isn’t just amazing for his age. It’s flat-out amazing,” says Jeff Wilcox, general manager of Wilcox Gallery. “He’s already a master and just keeps getting better.” Western-inspired works in the exhibition, which is made up of…

The art of Patricia A. Griffin teeters on several planes—impressionism, realism, pointillism—all of which culminate in an aesthetic that immediately identifies it as a Griffin painting. The artist is drawn toward North American wildlife, capturing their fur, feathers and flesh with brushes, palette knives and oils. When asked what free artistic expression means to Griffin, she says, “Free to make decisions, to take risks, to create a momentum in a direction of choice, to not be hindered by expectation. Art is communication, harnessing a vision and offering it to be perceived by another. Expression is the release of human emotion.” Griffin will be exploring this idea of untethered expression in a new solo show at Gallery Wild titled Avante Garde, a ubiquitous term in the art world that means “introducing…

For Andrea Vargas’ new show, hosted at King Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the title, Rose Quartz Leads to Gold, is symbolic. “When looking for precious minerals like gold, outcrops of rose quartz are clues for the treasure hunter to follow,” Vargas explains. “Gold is also a state of being—nirvana, wholeness and peace. Meanwhile, rose quartz is the mineral that corresponds to the heart. Therefore, a journey guided by heart is a path to wealth.” In a nutshell, the show’s theme is about journey, and Vargas hopes her paintings inspire a desire for adventure. The artist frequently travels between her two home bases in Southern California and Santa Fe, and for the new collection of around 26 works, she celebrates and honors the landscape of New Mexico, and more…

Although Gary Niblett was not brought up on a ranch, he had a fairly significant amount of exposure to the rural way of life from his family in West Texas. “As a kid, I always enjoyed visiting and experiencing all of the fun things they did on a daily basis. From playing in the overgrown mesquite pastures on the farms to riding calves and playing rodeo with my cousins, ranch life made for full days,” Niblett says. “My older brother had a ranch near Silver City, New Mexico, where I occasionally helped with the roundups and branding. It was not hard for me to decide to paint the whole Western theme, which included not only cowboys, but also the story of the Indians [and] the movement westward…” Niblett’s work has…

Like many auction watchers, Mike Overby, partner at the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, has been watching the sales from the first half of 2025. And as each one closed, he could sense that the market was healthy and vibrant. “It was easy to see the stable footing amid the resilience of the market,” he says. “As we worked on our own sale, all signs were pointing at us coming through like gangbusters.” Overby’s confidence in the market comes from the high prices Western art is achieving all around the country, and yet primarily from the collection of lots he has for his own sale on July 26 in Reno, Nevada. “We have 350 lots and we’re right where we want to be—with some truly remarkable artwork from many of the…