Morgan Weistling: Enlarging the Story
Morgan Weistling expands his Western world with a new show at Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole.
Norman Rockwell famously told whole stories, some of them with three full acts, within single paintings. The runaway at the lunch counter. The boy preparing for a shot from the family doctor. The praying family at the crowded diner. The war veteran recalling acts of heroism in the family garage. Some of the works were inspired by Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Rockwell’s hometown. They were meant to celebrate small-town America. But what the artist essentially created was Rockwell, USA, an imaginary place populated by his subjects who were living his stories and sharing his dreams.
Morgan Weistling’s subjects are very different—cowboys, lawmen, stagecoach riders, prospectors, blacksmiths—but they are linked to Rockwell in the way he creates a world, populates it with people and then paints their stories. The paintings feel alive because the world in which they exist is living to a certain extent, even if only in the artist’s head. The California-based Weistling will be showing his newest creations at a one-man show, The Illuminated West, opening September 7 at Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“It’s true that much of my work has built on the idea of a world set in the past of the Old West, with characters of my making filling that world. I have enlarged it once again as this current show now expands into the cowboys, lawmen and other professions of the West,” the artist says. “My love and passion for this time period and frontier towns with all their rich history has really set off a new inspiration for me. As I delve into my research I have come to a better knowledge of this subject and I feel more confident tackling it. I love to live in these characters’ shoes that I am painting and so it’s really fun for me play these roles in paint. I wear the clothes and sit in the saddles and get the dust in my lungs and it all helps me to bring life to these paintings.”
One of the overarching themes coming out of his studio is one of hope, happiness and genuine optimism. His figures smile. They have a twinkle in their eyes. And when they aren’t outright smiling, there is ambition and resilience in their faces. You can see these characteristics in all of his works, from the pie makers and quilt sewers to the gunslingers and cattle rustlers.
“I guess you could say I live in the past,” he says. “My entire career has centered on the stories of the American pioneering spirit. I depict the people, some historical and some from my imagination, who forged this country onward. In this collection of new paintings, I have been inspired to focus a laser beam on the historical cowboy. Shedding new light on the Old West, these paintings reveal intimate portrayals of the rough-andtumble life of the American Frontier. Some are painted with shards of sunlight cutting across the canvas and some are bathed in the cool dusk air, but all are filled with my love for the West in all its glorious light.”
New works in the show include Lamplighter of Abilene, which shows some of that glorious light as it shines on a rider’s face in a wet street scene; Dangerous Dan Tucker, Silver City, NM, 1878, a portrait of a fierce-looking lawman; and The Tracker, Wolf Creek Falls, 1873, a magnificent tableau of a rifletoting man straddling a waterfall amid gorgeous light cascading through a canyon. “The Tracker, Wolf Creek Falls, 1873 is a good example of my desire to illuminate the West and its inhabitants with rich slashes of light that dictated much of the
story of this tracker on his quest,” he adds. “The light is the narrator of story. It sets the mood and tells the story by leading you through with all it falls upon. The temperature and intensity add to the drama and is the first and last thing I want you to feel.”
In the lead-up to the sale—which will feature a fixed-price, by-draw sale on September 19— Weistling shared some early and unfinished versions of several of the new works, including Lamplighter of Abilene. In the work-in-progress version of the painting, the drawing peeks out from behind the oil paint amid a light wash that establishes the tone and mood of the soggy street scene. It’s a tiny and fascinating glimpse under the hood of the artist’s studio.
“It begins with idea sketches in numerous sketch pads I keep with me everywhere. Ideas will come at any time and so I have to draw them out in little thumbnail sketches that only I could probably interpret. From that, I let those ideas stew for a while I research them. I like to do color sketches on canvas panels to explore the idea further and see if it warrants hiring models and developing it further. Sometimes it’s not until I try it in paint that I know if it’s going to work,” he says. “So with all my research and references, then I do a final blackand-white pencil sketch to bring it all together. I used to start directly on a blank canvas with no drawing, but as my paintings have become more complex over the years I find it necessary to know where everything is going to go so I do a drawing in charcoal on the canvas and then begin with washes of color to get the overall tonal mood of where it’s going to go. I lay in shadows and light together at the same time and finishing as I go. That keeps me fresh and still adds some mystery to the process to keep me engaged at all times. Sometimes you can do too many stages in a painting and get bored by the end. So it’s important for me to feel some danger that it could crash and I have to stay awake to keep it on the road.”
Asked if there is a divide between the artist and the storyteller, or if they are always working together, Weistling shouts out to one of his heroes while acknowledging that painting often requires some acrobatic feats to make everything come together.
“Painting these types of paintings, where I attempt to capture a moment in time from the past, is a bit different than just setting up a model in front of me and painting just what I see. But my goal is to make it look like I was an observer from this time period and recorded just what
I saw,” he says. “To do that requires a lot of work and juggling. With one eye on the reality of what I am seeing and one eye set in the world that I am imagining is before me. This is done with a lot of preliminary work, studies and research. The master of this is, of course, Howard Terpning. So in trying to add that extra layer to a painting with a story to convey really adds to the juggling. But for me, in order to be able to throw myself into the creative act of painting and reacting to what I see, I have to work out the idea numerous ways ahead of time so that I can feel confident to ‘lose myself’ in the physical process.”
The Illuminated West runs from September 7 through 19 at Trailside Galleries.