Collector’s Focus: Roaming the West
The first wagon train reached Northern California in 1844 at the end of a months-long journey from Missouri. Today, traveling at the speed limit on interstate highways, it takes a little more than a day. Many of the wagon trains didn’t travel on Sundays, perhaps giving the settlers a chance to admire the beauty of the land they were working so arduously to cross. Today, set on getting from point A to point B, we miss what’s in between.
Derek Buckner, who, for many years, had a studio along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, found beauty in the way the light played on the industrial buildings and bridges and the way it reflected off the oil-slicked water of the canal. He also found beauty in the freeways engineered to get us where we’re going without any obvious aesthetic concerns. In Freeway, the dramatic sky is lost to the driver concentrating on many lanes of traffic and a plethora of directional signs. For many years, Buckner painted directly from life, finding the flatness of a reference photograph uninspiring. Now, using an ipad he can capture a scene and manipulate color and composition to get the feeling of a scene. His paintings are composed of the reality as well as his memories and the artistic decisions he makes along the way.
“It is the desire to translate my experience of seeing through paint, which compels me to put my brush to canvas,” he says. “In order for me to paint I need to be emotionally excited by a subject.”
Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin was born in the land of freeways in Southern California, which she interpreted in her early paintings. Today, living in Northern California, she portrays the vast, natural landscape often compressed into small formats. In Bridge Over the Navarro, the bridge eases drivers across the river near its mouth where it empties into the Pacific—an insurmountable obstacle to early travelers.
She says, “To see the human presence in the context of the natural environment has opened an arena of metaphors and ideas.”
Approaching the 6½-by-7¼-inch painting to see it more clearly, the illusion of reality gives way to the awareness of Rubin’s lushlyapplied paint “right out of the tube.” Working from photographic references, she wades through the vast amount of information they contain, studying them for a long time to become familiar enough with them “to find in there the kernel of information that
I’m interested in plucking out…what is it in there that’s really inspiring me to work with this image.” The 2012 Guggenheim Fellow continues, “As time passes, I am ever more vigilant to keep my focus to include only what gets at the point of interest. And under all this, the image must work abstractly. Take away the recognizable and that is what holds it all together.”
Even today, to explore the farther reaches of the West, modern transportation only goes so far. A couple stands by their canoe as the floatplane flies away in Ross Buckland’s painting We Paddle from Here. He was born in Calgary, Alberta, and after his family moved east to Ontario he had the thrill of flying four hours back to Calgary to visit his grandparents in the summer. He loved all things “West” and everything about aviation—and, from an early age, he loved to draw.
He says, “The earth around us is an integral part of the enjoyment of flying—those on the ground look to the sky, those in the air look at the ground—so, instead of depicting an aircraft at altitude with a common sky background, my compositions include an interesting and relevant landscape that is, hopefully, attractive
to the viewer and evokes a desire to be there.”
Kevin Kehoe grew up in New England where he attended the Art Institute of Boston. In 2011, after a very successful 30-year career in advertising, he and his family moved to Utah where they had a vacation home. In 2013 he began painting again. Summer of Reverence, [which depicts] a lone biker riding through a vast landscape, is from a group of paintings he calls Western Therapy.
He explains, “We all need to be reminded that the big picture is indeed big, and we are indeed small. Feeling significantly insignificant is the West’s wonderful way of renewing our sense of wow and wonder, while simultaneously resizing life’s trials and tribulations. Reserve a space for awe in your psyche and the West will fill it. Each time I immerse myself in the spiritual spaces of the west they stir my soul, spark my imagination and reconfirm my love affair with the wildly beautiful relationship between landscape and light, person and place. Long story short, each of the magical Western places I’ve chosen to paint have worked their Western magic on me. My aim and my hope is that my Western Therapy paintings will have a similar effect on you.”
Throughout the pages of this special collector’s focus, readers will find artwork depicting scenes of the American West and beyond—from deserts, mountains and wildlife, to the classic cowboy aesthetic.
“Painting for me is a form of travel, with every picture a new adventure. In Treasures at the Dump a water serpent from San lldefonso Pueblo passes through debris of ancient and once cherished items,” says Colorado-based artist John Philp Wagner.
“It is natural for viewers and collectors of
art who have an attachment to, or a fondness for, the subject matter to demand authenticity,” says Ross Buckland. “When painting airplanes, trains or even canoes, the artist invites the critique of many who are quite knowledgeable with the particular genre, which is appreciated as it keeps us on our toes. Basically, it has to be done correctly.”
“I enjoy pulling the viewer into my work by creating engaging stories and narratives,” shares Russell Smith. “Everything about the American West—the real people and events, the myths and legends, and the drama of the landscape itself—lends itself to great storytelling. My advice to collectors in this genre is to find works that reveal themselves slowly, so that every time you look at them they show you something new.”