Jim Wilcox
According to artist Jim Wilcox,
“Painting requires tricking people into seeing grandiose subjects with depth and mood when they’re really seeing dabs of paint on a flat surface. A somewhat impressionistic approach like mine may appear photographic at a distance, but tool marks of the artist will be obvious to anyone taking a close look. When viewers excitedly discover those marks, as some clients did yesterday as we hung my paintings in their beautiful home, I realize that the trick of turning dabs into vistas is working.”
Summer jobs in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, led Wilcox to choose a career in art, as it allowed him to live in the city and spend time outdoors with his favorite subjects. Wilcox not only paints, but owns the Wilcox Gallery, which has two locations in the city that has become known for its Western art scene. “This spring my family and I will have lived here 50 years, with my career and galleries adding to the joy and successes of being here,” he says.
While Wilcox enjoys the beauty of ordinary subjects his focus is on spectacular views that are abundant where he lives. Within 100 miles, he explains, there is almost every kind of landscape except for the ocean and jungle.
“Varied and competing subject matter often make the decision of what to paint next difficult. Choosing any subject requires temporarily ignoring thousands of others,” he says. “As if mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, geysers and skies aren’t enough, we’re also blessed with abundant wildlife, which sometimes appears in the foreground of my painting instead of being hidden behind trees or rocks.”