G. Russell Case
New inspiration
Beginning April 11 at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles is a new solo show for landscape painter G. Russell Case, whose paintings of deserts and canyons in the Southwest have delighted a generation of Western art collectors.
For his new show, the artist, as is often the case—no pun intended—spent time on the road and traveling to find the places that inspired his brush. Several of the new works came to be after painting plein air studies in southern Utah.
“With plein air you just take every little trip you can, because each one gives you new inspiration and subject matter. You just gotta get outside—that’s always the key,” he says. “The essence of what we do is looking at stuff, and seeing what we like. Southern Utah is not far from me in Brigham City [Utah] so I’ll head down there—right along the Arizona-utah border by the Vermilion Cliff area—for some inspiration. I’ll start in the morning and just follow the shadows. Sometimes all I’m looking for is that light and dark, and it can be minimal, as opposed to the big, dramatic things. It’s like a temperament, and sometimes you just want something different on the menu.”
One of the works in the show is Towers of the Vermilion, which shows three different types of land: sage-strewn valley floor in the foreground, smaller cliffs in the mid-distance of the painting, and massive shadow-lined walls of rock in the far distance. Other works include areas in the Navajo Nation, as well as the Grand Canyon.
Case is excited to be showing at Maxwell Alexander Gallery, which has made a name for itself by exhibiting both contemporary and traditional Western artists—so both Old West and New West. But the artist tries to ignore the labels and instead just keeps painting.
“The curse of the art business is not being able to see yourself. You can see the faults in other people more than yourself, so it’s hard to know what you’re projecting into your work. I know what excites me and what I’m trying to do, but whether it comes across is another thing. You just have to do what you love, otherwise you’ll burn out,” Case says. “It can be a balancing act trying to hold onto your traditional sacred cows, but then also watching
everything else and being willing to grow and think without abandoning your roots.”
He continues: “What I’m trying to do is make solid designs and paintings, and keep growing as far as letting myself be good. It’s hard to always see things the way we are. We go off chasing rabbit trails and we get lost. Right now I’m sitting in front of a bunch of paintings and I want to have a grip on what is being said by the work. It’s a tightrope that artists walk on.”