Masters of the American West Los Angeles, CA
A diverse and masterful group of Western artists returns to the Masters of the American West exhibition in Los Angeles.
The top Western artists in the country will once again come together in California for the Masters of the American West exhibition as it returns to the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles on February 8. The show, recognized as one of the most important Western events of the year, will kick off with nearly 65 artists, each one a master of their medium.
Masters of the American West will not only highlight artists working in a more traditional Western approach, but also shine a bright spotlight on artists who are working in a contemporary style, one that pushes the envelope on what Western art is or can be. This pairing of traditional and contemporary brings out some fascinating pairings: from the classic technique of Len Chmiel to the modernist leanings of Tony Abeyta, from the exquisite and raw brushwork of John Moyers to the fine detail and design of Thomas Blackshear II, and from the action-packed forms of sculptor
Bill Nebeker to the more modern and elegant bronzes of Tim Cherry. On every wall of the Masters gallery, at every turn, there is artwork that reinforces the importance of the West and exemplifies its cultural significance.
Artists in this year’s show includes William Acheff, Gerald Balciar, Christopher Blossom, Kenneth Bunn, Scott Burdick, George Carlson, Michael Coleman, John Fawcett, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Oreland Joe, John Moyers, Terri Kelly Moyers, Kyle Polzin, Howard Post,
Tim Solliday and many others. The exhibition is also known for its inclusion of prominent Native American artists, including Abeyta, Kevin Red Star, Mateo Romero and sisters Tammy Garcia and Autumn Borts-medlock.
The event kicks off February 7 with an artists’ dinner, followed by a full lineup of events on the opening day, Saturday, February 8. This year’s Saturday events includes separate presentations by Kim Wiggins and Billy Schenck, a miniatures sale, the main by-draw sale and an after-sale party. The entire exhibition will be on view through March 22.
Grant Redden will be showing work at this year’s sale, including one of his famous
cowboy works, Riding the Palomino. “The click of shod hooves on sandstone, the swish of flaxen tail, the squeak of leather and the fresh and tawny smell of sage and dry grass are what strikes the senses on an October ride in desert country,” Redden says of the work. He will also be showing Mowing Hay, which features two workhorses and a man on an old piece of farm equipment. “When the work in the field was done with real horsepower, when the only noise was the soft clatter of a 5-foot sickle bar, the voice of the mower as he encourages and coaxes the horses through a turn. It’s romantic to us now, but 50 to 75 years ago, it was the natural order of things.”
Bill Anton will be presenting Pacific Pastures, a scene with wild horses grazing next to the Pacific Coast. “Mares and yearlings wandering out to graze on coastal grasses presents a wonderful opportunity for the traditional Western painter to depict a less common, but uniquely compelling setting,” the Arizona painter says. “Ranching in the American West isn’t just mountains and prairies.”
Like Anton, Chmiel will also be turning to the American landscape for his Masters works, one of which is As the Details Emerge, a sunset scene showing the sweeping motion of sunlight as it rakes across glowing cliffs. “An hour of fumbling on a barely visible trail rewards the effort with a brightening horizon,” Chmiel says. “The gauzy veil of dawn lifts, revealing once amorphous shapes to be a festival of color and texture. Is the tingle of goosebumps due to the crackling chill?”
Famed watercolor artist Dean Mitchell will be showing several of his new landscape images, but he will also be experimenting with a more modern work such as Ghost, which features a single skull in a vast field of color and several abstract forms, one of them a Native American teepee. “This piece is about war, bloodshed, death, diseases and religious ideology that forever changed the way of life of the Indigenous people of the land we now called the American West,” Mitchell says.
James Morgan turns his attention to birds with Reflecting on a Small Pond, which features “a pair of stately, always alert trumpeter swans drifting slowly through constantly changing abstract patterns and reflections of the birds and their surroundings,” and Desert Dry Wash Daydreamer, a desert scene of a sleeping predator. “A coyote snoozes in the cooling shade of rabbit brush,” Morgan says, “awaiting the cover of night to continue patrolling the sands of the Southwest desert.”
Eric Bowman will be showing several
new horse-and-rider works, including Land of Enchantment, depicting a Native American rider posing against a cloud-strewn sky. “The title, Land of Enchantment, swiped from a New Mexico license plate, is fitting for this painting depicting a Native resident astride a beautiful breed of horse common to the Southwest of a hundred years ago,” he says. “I have had an affinity for the desert ever since I was a child and have always considered it a magical place; that coupled with inspiration from the early Taos painters help make this painting an iconic representation of a truly enchanted land.” Other Bowman works include Available Space, Cumulus Major and Valley of the Shadow, a dramatically lit scene with a cowboy and his horse against clouds and cliffs that are almost abstracted forms.
Another work that plays with abstraction, as well as brilliant colors, is Dustin Van Wechel’s Lemon Meringue Pie, a bird painting against yellow and green leaves on an aspen tree. “The family of corvidae,
which includes many of my favorite birds such as ravens, crows and magpies, are a joy to observe in the wild. Their keen intelligence and bold attitudes have often led me to find unique ways in which to tell their stories through my work. The black-billed magpie—common to the Rocky Mountain West—is particularly inspiring to me as an artist,” the Colorado painter says. “For my painting Lemon Meringue Pie, their beautiful markings, combined with the rich colors of the fall season, provided a treasure of possibility that I deeply enjoyed working out onto canvas.”
Santa Clara potter Garcia will be showing bronze pottery as well as paintings. In How the West Was One, she presents a bronze pot in a mesmerizing gold-tinted patina. “How the West Was One is a piece about dual natures. It is cast bronze, yet born of clay. It inherits age-old Pueblo traditions, yet sparkles seductively like gold,” Garcia says. “It captures the spirit of the artist: rooted in tradition, yet modern and innovative.”
New Mexico-based painter Kim Wiggins will be showing his 60-inch-wide piece Fleeing Hell’s Fury – Range Fire, which draws on history for its narrative. “For much of the world, the cowboy and the West are the purest representation in art of the American spirit. The cowboy has become an honored hero representing the bravery, passion and undaunted courage that tamed the Wild West. As with many of my works, this painting is symbolic as I seek to reference meaning behind the image on multiple levels,” Wiggins says. “Key aspects of this painting focus on the influence of the three major icons of Western Art—charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington and W.R. Leigh—and their impact on today’s contemporary Western artists. Here in this painting we see the past or living history of the West burning up in flames behind them. We no longer have a so called ‘Wild West,’ men living by the law of ‘The Peacemaker’ or even massive cattle herds being driven across the open range. What’s left to contemporary artists of our generation are the paintings, photographs and documented memories of the great icons of Western art and the historians who followed.”
While the bulk of the artwork will be sold during the February 8 fixed-price, by-draw sale, Masters of the American West will remain on view through March 22.