Collector’s Focus: Roaming the West
Horse-drawn farm wagons were a staple of transportation for generations, evolving into the heavy, covered, Conestoga wagons that carried settlers west and were used for further generations to carry goods to market. Gustave Baumann (1881-1971) carved the blocks for his woodcut Atalaya Peak in 1925. He had moved to Santa Fe in 1919 and lived there for the rest of his life, capturing the life and the seasons of northern New Mexico in his now iconic prints. He always considered himself a craftsman and wanted to share his work with the public. Living in Indiana he developed his personal seal, an open hand over a heart—his pledge to make his work available to the public. It can be seen with his signature at the lower right of the print.
Prominent in Atalaya Peak is a covered wagon possibly leaving for market from the small farm at the base of 9,000-foot Atalaya Peak outside Santa Fe.
Transportation around the West became easier with the advent of cars and trucks. Pickup trucks from the 1930s and onward still ply the roads of the Southwest, many of them in pristine condition and often proudly shown at car shows. Some, however, have been abandoned and slowly rot in fields, a frequent subject for painters.
Dennis Ziemienski paints the landscape of the Southwest as well as the ephemeral marks made by man, from neon motel signs to aging vehicles, capturing them before they’re gone. His Red Overdrive is a mid-1950s Ford F-100 pickup in front of an adobe building—a scene that could be from the 1950s or today.
Ziemienski began his professional career as an illustrator as several of his idols, like Maynard Dixon and Edward Hopper. He says, they were “fine illustrators. I think it was their use of geometry and their composition that influenced me the most. Even back in college I knew I wanted to make dramatic compositions like theirs.”
Living in the Rio Grande Gorge in northern New Mexico, Jim Vogel celebrates the generations of farmers who first settled in the region around the turn of the 18th century. Hard working, they plowed, planted and harvested their crops by hand—which Vogel honors with outsized, gnarled hands on his subjects. In Harvest, a farmer carries a basket of chiles while behind him is a van labeled “Diego’s Farm.” The shiny truck was in its heyday in the painting which is framed in the rusted door of a well-used van worn by time, as is Diego.
Settlers who arrived in San Francisco by horseback, wagon or sailing ship would be astonished by the variety of conveyances on the streets of the city today.
Jacob Dhein’s Morning Trolley on Market Street depicts not only the trolley but buses, trucks and cars—a cacophony of sounds and a confusion of movement even for a contemporary pedestrian trying to navigate the city. Describing his cityscapes, he writes, “In these paintings the background is complex
and shadow areas have little to no detail... Areas of interest are fragmented to different degrees giving a sense of movement to the figure and busy city life. By breaking up some of these areas it is my goal to entertain the eye of observer by using a variety of deconstructed areas in contrast to smooth areas. This in turn creates a sense a rhythm and harmony throughout the composition keeping the viewer engaged.”
A more relaxed example of roaming the West is Pirate by Joseph Todorovitch. Perhaps not quite ready to tackle the trails on the mountains behind her, the bicyclist pauses on a leisurely ride among the foothills. The subtle palette and light give the painting a contemplative quality and make the model one with her environment. He says, “I’m a contemporary painter who looks to the past for clues about the future of painting. By understanding fundamental principles of picture making, we can develop paintings that are harmonious and innovative.” Grounded in 19th-century naturalism, his painting surfaces remind us we are simultaneously looking at paint while we identify with the figures he has so carefully observed and rendered.
One of the wonders of engineering that makes roaming the coast of California such a sometimes terrifying delight is the 659mile Pacific Coast Highway which hugs the mountains along the coast. Woody
Gwyn captures the grandeur of nature and technology in his 10-foot-wide painting named after the highway. Gwynn lives in the dramatic landscape of Galisteo, New Mexico, inhabited for thousands of years. He frequently travels to the West Coast and paints the meeting of land and sea and the highway that runs along it. “We know the mountains are finite,” he says, “but they put us in mind of infinity.”
And then, of course, is the horse. Nearly wiped out after the last ice age, they were reintroduced to the Americas by the Spanish. Their adoption by Native Americans changed the course of their lives. Frederic Remington (18611909) made his first trip west in 1881. In Andy Thomas’ Remington Goes West, Remington gazes at the mountains as his horse nibbles grass along a stream, its saddle resting on the ground next to a campfire. “Without knowing how to do
it,” Remington wrote, “I began to record some facts around me, and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded.”
In the pages of this special section, collectors can view artwork and learn about artists depicting scenes of the American West and beyond, from deserts, mountains and wildlife, to the classic cowboy aesthetic.
Artist Janeil Anderson gains inspiration for her work from her parents and grandparents. Anderson says her parents—born in the
1920s and having lived through the Great Depression— survived those trying times through their hard work farming their own land. Anderson says she feels that this is the greatest generation there will ever be, and stories she has heard of both her parents and grandparents inspired her to paint this era in time. She is sure some cowboys had a hard time giving up the horse to the car in the beginning. Today, she says, cowboys use trucks and trailers every day to travel the West. In her oil, Cowboy Chivalry, a cowboy on horseback stops to help a mother and her children with a broken-down car on the side of the road, an idealized view of the charming cowboy looking to help out wherever and whenever he can.
Currently living in Toronto, Ross Buckland learned to paint through studying the work of artists he admires like Frank Wootton, Keith Ferris and R.G. Smith. With a love for flying that developed at an early age, Buckland paints aviation subjects, many of which are set against Western wilderness backdrops, from towering mountains and forests of pine, to sprawling lakes. “The goal is not necessarily to depict an actual location or event, but more to celebrate the natural elements and the typical environment and circumstances of flying far from the established airways,” says the artist. “Not unlike today’s cowboy artists, my personal input is perhaps influenced by my own flying experience mixed with a sentimental, nostalgic notion of aviation’s adventurous past.” When imagining his airplane pieces playing out in actual life, covering large swaths of land in seconds, the concept of “roaming the West” seems particularly fitting. “My efforts are more to primarily evoke, awaken or satisfy a feeling,” says Buckland. “The romantic nostalgia of remembered or imagined experiences and to remind us that, fortunately, there is still much more wilderness adventure to enjoy.”