Collector’s Focus: Farms & Barns
In 1989, when Z.Z. Wei came to the United States from China on a cultural exchange program he was impressed by the rural wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest. He eventually settled there, driving the lonely roads, eventually finding Alaska and the desert Southwest. He began painting during China’s Cultural Revolution. “It became my sanctuary,” he recalls. He later became known for his woven sculptures that were shown at the Chinese National Museum in Beijing.
His landscape paintings echo the flowing forms of his sculpture and reflect the interior landscape of Chinese painting. Shadows undulate across his paintings, sometimes appearing as carved sculptures themselves. “They are not the light and shadow I see in nature” he says. “They are the light and shadow in my heart.”
The rural barns are solid repositories of the farmer’s and nature’s work, sturdy for now, but destined to return to the earth like the rusting cars and trucks that are often shown nearby. In A Windy Morning, shadows alternate with light, moving sinuously across the rectilinear barn. They confound our expectation that the dark shadows intrude on the light—the light appears to intrude on the shadows.
For Wei, “the most important element in a painting is its major structure.” He begins with “tons of sketches” drawn on 3-by-5-inch cards as he works out a composition. He transfers the composition to his canvas, building up the
surface with layers of paint, enriching the surface with more and more refined brushstrokes. There is little detail in his paintings, however, recalling his experience of the landscape when he is on his many road trips. “Driving at speed, you don’t see the details,” he says.
In Douglas Fryer’s paintings, the landscape itself seems to be moving. Ironically, in Black Horses, the horses appear to be the only subjects not moving. Light and shadow move across the landscape as we do when we walk through it. Turn your head or move a couple of feet—or do both—and the scene changes. Trees have roundness, grasses wave in the breeze and buildings have more than one side. Fryer refers to “the metaphysical aspects of the scene that have to do with the spirit and the passage of time. Sometimes detail can be far less realistic than something suggested. Suggestions of reality can be far more descriptive of a thing.”
Experiencing the landscape, he acknowledges there was “a spiritual creation before a physical creation. Things that are created have a spirit and intelligence that gladden our hearts and beautifies the world.”
In his studio, Fryer relies on his memories of experiencing a scene, applying paint with trowels and brushes, often suggesting, rather than creating forms. The infinite variety of light, form, color and movement in a scene as well as the movement of his body are all captured in the paint—dried on the canvas, but containing and suggesting an energetic experience.
In the pages of this special section, collectors can glimpse more views of idyllic farms and barns that evoke the sensibilities of a simpler way of life.
Celebrating its 20th year on Canyon Road, Giacobbe-fritz Fine Art has been the place where collectors can find the perfect artwork that brings joy and beauty to their lives, including scenes of the farms and barns so iconic of Western life. “As much as artists love to paint barns, we as viewers love to enjoy them,” says owner Deborah Fritz. “These paintings often hold a sentimental place in our hearts—a personal connection to a common structure. Procuring these works of art allows us to bring that joy, a sense of peace, into our lives through our personal art collections.” Stephanie Hartshorn’s Sunnyside Out is a prime example of the simple joy of a green pasture and a quintessential red barn. Thick impasto brushstrokes of radiant greens take over the foreground, while a barn of subdued crimson tones sits at the right side of the composition in front of blue skies.
“These precious girls playing with this basket of little chicks just begged to be painted to preserve that moment of time forever and to be enjoyed by all,” says artist Pam Bunch, who creates oil paintings of Western scenes. “The obsession to paint and paint from my heart occupies my daily life with most of my subject matter from images captured on my camera while traveling to and from shows across my home state of Texas.” She shows at her gallery, Lee-bunch Studio Gallery in Del Rio, Texas.