The Brinton 101
Big Horn, WY
TThe Brinton Museum’s annual Brinton 101 show brings together around 101 of the best Western artists working in the country today. It’s a spectacle for the Western art collector with hundreds of small works on display and available for purchase.
“We change the artists up a little bit every year, so it’s always a different show than it was the previous year,” says Kenneth Schuster, director and chief curator at the Brinton Museum. “This year we’re excited because we’ve started an artist-in-residency program,” he says, adding that 2018 artists-in-residence Denise Larue Mahlke, Jessica Garrett, John Potter and Terri Wells are all part of the upcoming show, as well as newcomer Jacob Aguiar. “We also have our tried and true great artists,” says Schuster, mentioning Clyde Aspevig, Oreland Joe, T.D. Kelsey, Lorenzo Chavez and more.
Hilltop Gathering, a charcoal by Mahlke, is one of Schuster’s favorites in the show. “It’s a beautiful drawing...and it’s more of an impressionistic drawing, rather than totally photographic realism,” he says.
Mahlke comments on the piece, which features birds flying around a group of trees: “In walking the Brinton Museum grounds one morning, a flock of raucous blackbirds caught my attention. They hung out in the tops of these scraggly hilltop trees just long enough for me to do a quick thumbnail sketch, then later do a little bit larger drawing.”
Another standout piece is Garrett’s oil Nightfall, which Schuster describes as “a winter night scene…it’s a beautiful, cold scene…lots of blues, very loosely rendered.”
“Wind in Her Hair is a young Crow Native American woman that I saw at the Crow Fair outside of Hardin, Montana,” says Laurie Lee of her oil appearing in the 2019 show. “Her
name is Brinna Melendrez. I really liked the coral shirt and black hat she was wearing as her hair cascaded across her face on that windy day.”
In Kathy Wipfler’s Caught, a cowboy rides on horseback, a flurry of dust being kicked up in his wake. “Caught is a small painting of a cowboy friend of mine. I ride with some of the ‘real deal’ cowboys and ranchers of Western Wyoming and am privileged to be invited to help with the work they do [on] horseback,” says Wipfler.
Crystal River is part of a series of studies artist Chula Beauregard did of the Crystal River that runs from Marble, Colorado, into the Roaring Fork River in Carbondale. “The 40-mile river is one of the most beautiful in Colorado, and I studied it both in winter and in summer. I chose the 8-by-8 format and a palette knife so the graphic quality of the paintings would remain strong. This series is the beginning of a more contemporary approach that I have been experimenting with lately,” says Beauregard.
These and many other works will be on view at the The Brinton 101, which runs from October 27 to December 22. An opening reception to meet the artists will be held October 27 from 3 to 5 p.m.