Prix de West
Oklahoma City, OK
Many of the top Western artists in the country are returning to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum for the prestigious Prix de West, which begins August 1 in Oklahoma City.
The show was bumped from its normal June dates after the pandemic caused mass cancelations throughout the world, including art events at countless museums. “Prix de West is the most anticipated event in the Western art world, and it is our honor to continue this tradition for its 48th year,” Natalie Shirley, museum president and CEO, said at the time of the postponement. In the intervening months, the museum has reopened and new health protocols were implemented for the safety of visitors and museum staff.
Seismic events like this are not entirely unprecedented in the art world. Artists have faced catastrophic challenges before, and rebounded marvelously through adversity. Maynard Dixon survived the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, though his studio did not. John Mix Stanley lost two collections of work in separate fires in New York and Washington, D.C. Residents of northern New Mexico, including many of the great painters in Taos, were urged to stay indoors and wear surgical masks as the 1918 flu epidemic tore through the Southwest.
If history is our guide, art never stops, and artists persevere. And the Prix de West will be proof to that.
This year’s Prix will feature 93 artists, including many of the top artists working today: William Acheff, Bill Anton, G. Russell Case, Len Chmiel, Tim Cox, Glenn Dean, C. Michael Dudash, Teresa Elliott, Bruce Greene, Martin Grelle, Robert Griffing, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Oreland Joe, Z.S. Liang, Jeremy Lipking, Susan Lyon, Bonnie Marris, Sherrie Mcgraw, John Moyers, Terri Kelly Moyers, Kyle Polzin, Curt Walters and many others. Their works span many categories, from still life and landscapes, bronzes and stone works, to wildlife and sporting art, to classic images of cowboys and Native Americans.
George Hallmark, who has frequently sold out at the Prix, will be showing several new quiet village scenes, as well as one of his big church paintings, Sombras de Cielo.
“All of the colonial villages of north central Mexico contain beautiful parish churches,” The Texas painter says. “This particular structure features a smaller-than-usual entry façade with an immense white wall containing several recesses. During certain times of the day, the beautiful sunlight and shadows create a feeling of tranquility. These patterns are truly Sombras de Cielo, Shadows of Heaven.”
John Banovich turns to wildlife for his Prix
pieces, including Memories of My Father,
which shows a deer in an overgrown forest. “The shed antlers of great bucks mark the passage of generations through the forest underbrush, reminding us that in the wake of every legend another rises,” he says of
the work. “Having spent many years of my youth in the mountains of Montana with my father hunting white-tailed deer, I love the opportunity to paint a buck in its prime. This buck has stumbled on an antler drop, which are shed and regrown annually. He stares at the bleached antlers of his forebearer who passed on his genetic potential to his son, as he will in turn pass his legacy on to his own offspring…just like my late father, John, did to me.”
Dean Mitchell also captures an overgrowth in nature in his watercolor piece Remnants, which is part of a new series the artist started last year that show oil territories in the West. “The structures are located very close to old oil wells. It’s a vanishing part of the Old West that is still around,” he says. “I was surprised to see them abandoned but still standing, very dark in color, yet they had a strong quality of presence to them despite the weathered aging
of time—standing there in the misty of history. I wonder how many lives did these structures effect and who benefited from this natural black liquid we call oil.”
Landscape painter Josh Elliott will be showing a varied batch of subjects, from high mountains to low deserts, such as in Desert Kingdom. “These are the Echo Cliffs, across from the Vermilion Cliffs in Northern Arizona,” the artist says. “I paint what excites me, and I loved the color combination of this scene. While trying to stay true to the colors I saw, I rearranged elements and played with the composition a bit. I was aiming for a dynamic and slightly offbeat design. This one almost painted itself, and when that happens I know I am having fun with my work!”
Morgan Weistling will also be showing fun new work including his high-action piece The Posse, which was inspired by real people.
“The Cook Gang were ruthless outlaws who terrorized the Indian Territory of Oklahoma in the year of 1894,” Weistling says. “When I read about a hotly pursued posse chasing them, which led to a volley of gunshots and further chases, I was inspired to capture the pursuing lawmen and citizens who were formed for such deeds. Since the time of my childhood, I have been fascinated by these stories of the West and I completely reveled in bringing this image to
life. My criteria for whether I was succeeding or not was if when I sat in front it, that I could hear the sounds of hoofs and clapping leather and if dust filled my lungs.”
One of the rising Western stars, Eric Bowman, will be on hand with several new works, including Into the Mystic, which shares its title with a Van Morrison song. “To me, there has always been an air of mystery about the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest, so I wanted to convey that in this scene of a solitary rider moving away from us into...well, that part’s up to the viewer; a long, arduous journey into an unknown future? Or perhaps this is a metaphor for an ancient people traveling through time,” he says. “At any rate, with his back toward us under an expansive sky, this mysterious traveler couples well with the arid landscape stretched out before him as he journeys ‘into the mystic’ of the desert Southwest.”
Howard Post, another artist who performs well with buyers at the Prix, will be showing his colorful, modernist works, all of them featuring horses. “As with a lot of my work the things that attract me to a scene or image are not necessarily the subjects themselves—more often it’s the light quality or the natural rhythm of the shapes or the color patterns,” Post says. “Of course I always hope my love for horses and the other icons of the West shows through.”
With the new dates also comes a new format for this year’s Prix de West. This year’s show opens early, on August 1, followed by the normal opening weekend events—seminars, awards presentations, artist demonstrations, receptions and the by-draw sale—on September 11 and 12.