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Artists
The following are the artists that were invited to participate in The 2011 West Select Sale and Exhibition. For more information on being considered to participate in The West Select, please see the FAQs.
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- and others to
be named later.
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William Acheff
William Acheff's art passion was kindled while living in the San Francisco Bay area when, at age 22, artist Roberto Lupetti invited him to his drawing class. After six months, Acheff moved into his own studio while continuing visits to Lupetti's studio for criticism and words of wisdom.
Restless, Acheff ventured to Taos in 1973. Armed with classical training, he developed a very distinct style that is widely recognized and admired. He is renowned for his highly realistic still lifes of rich Native American artifacts of the past. The Pueblo Indians of Taos have provided him with inspiring subjects to paint. "Artifacts and traditions of the past," he explains, "seem to hold more mystical and aesthetic value than those of contemporary times."
Acheff has shown in major Western art shows: Western Heritage Sale, Artists of America, National Academy of Western Art, The Hubbard Show, Prix de West, Autry Masters of the American West. He is a two time Prix de West Award winner (1989, 2004) and received the Masters of America West Purchase Award in 1998.
www.acheffstudio.com |
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Bill Anton
After seeing the American West for the first time as a seven-year-old, Bill Anton vowed to return for good someday. He left his home in the Midwest some 12 years later and the Arizona high country has been home ever since.
Exposed to art early and often, Anton drew constantly from the time he was old enough to hold a pencil. Inevitably, his two great loves in life united when he turned to western art full-time in 1982.
Born in Chicago in 1957, Bill later moved to Prescott, Arizona and he graduated from Northern Arizona University. Later, after committing to painting full-time, he studied under Michael Lynch and Ned Jacob, who encouraged him to paint from life.
Anton's work has been published in Southwest Art, Architectural Digest, Art of the West, Equine Images, Western Horseman and Art-Talk. He was featured on the cover of the April 2006 American Artist magazine. Corporate collections that include his work are Sears, Dupont, State Farm Insurance, Bank of America, Hewlett Packard, and Trust Company of the West. His award winning work has been displayed at the Prix de West at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Master of the American West at The Autry Museum, The National Center for American Western Art, The Old West Museum and The National Museum of Wildlife Art. In addition, his work is in the permanent collection of the prestigious Gilcrease Museum.
Bill says, "I do not see myself as a biographer of the 'cowboy.' I know some artists feel they are recording an historical portrayal of ranch life today in the American West. But the focus of my work has always been mood and passion. If I'm recording anything, I'm recording how I feel about the West. I want the viewer to feel the drama of atmosphere and the mystery of a western night. I want the volume and portent of a cloud to be evident in the calligraphy of a brush stroke."
www.billantonstudio.com |
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Scott Baxter
Scott has been a professional photographer for over 25 years. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Mexico, and Japan. He is currently working on 100 Years 100 Ranchers, an official Legacy Project of the Arizona Centennial in 2012. Scott will also be working on a philanthropic project at an orphanage in the Chiapas Region of Southern Mexico in 2010.
www.scottbaxterphotography.com |
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Arturo Chavez
Arturo Chávez was born in 1949 in Embudo, New Mexico near Taos. He was raised amid the spectacular vistas of Northern New Mexico. Chávez is dedicated to preserving the landscape, by painting it.
Chavez painted throughout his youth, but did not turn to art as a full-time career until the 1980s. Since then, he has received international recognition for his landscapes, including exhibitions in the US embassies in Moscow, Croatia and Guyana. Chávez’ works can be seen as part of the permanent collections at New Mexico State University, The Bernalillo County Courthouse, The Santa Fe Capitol Collection, the Taos National Guard, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. His work is also in corporate collections including Ebner International in Linz, Austria, Fuji Electric in Japan and the permanent collection of Burlington Northern Railway.
Like many gifted artists, Chávez is also a talented musician--he studied classical concert guitar at the University of New Mexico. He also was a mission pilot for the civil air patrol.
In his artistic process, Chávez uses a combination of on location studies coupled with compositional drawings and intermediate painting studies he creates in his studio to arrive at a finished painting for exhibition in a gallery or a museum.
www.arturochavez.com |
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Len Chmeil
There is an intimacy and honesty about the subjects oil painter Len Chmiel chooses, as if each painting were an expression of himself. He explains that he has a pretty good idea of who he is at this point in his life. "I used to try to control everything but now I allow my intuition to speak more. I try to stretch the truth of what the actual image is. I never wind up with a real representation. I do things that are recognizable, yes, but I have a much different intention."
Chmiel travels and works outdoors a great deal, frequently taking trips dedicated to painting on location. His travels have taken him to England, Scotland, and across Europe, into Mexico, Guatemala and Uruguay, as far away as Nepal and Thailand, and as close to home as his own backyard. He is fond of the Western United States where he often fits in hunting excursions with his painting trips. Chmiel tends to work small on location and bring his work back to the studio where he focuses on larger paintings. "I explore the boundaries of the smaller pieces to see which are suited for the impact of an expanded composition."
Chmiel maintains a truly open minded view of art. He cites painters Gustav Klimt, Andrew Wyeth and Richard Diebenkorn as influential artists who were quite different philosophically but similar in that they all transcended their craft and actually told the viewer something about themselves.
Len Chmiel has had numerous sell-out one man shows, is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the West. He has been featured several times in "Southwest Art Magazine", as well as "Business Week", "Western Art Digest", and "American Artist Magazine". His work is included in two books on oil painting, Contemporary American Oil Painting and Freshen Your Painting with New Ideas. His work has been collected by Museums and major corporations across the United States and can be seen in such prestigious shows as the Prix de West Invitational and the Masters of the American West at the Autry Museum where he was voted the Artist Choice Award in 2002.
Chmiel, makes his home in Hotchkiss, Colorado where he not only paints but also gardens, tends his vineyard and fruit trees, makes wine and hunts.
www.lenchmeil.com |
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Jay Dusard
A documentary filmmaker for over thirty years and a teacher of filmmaking and video production for as many years, Michael Markee has taught and made films and videos with a passion for much of his life.
The first commercial documentary he made was on Oregon poet laureate, William Stafford, entitled "What The River Says." Beginning his career as an English teacher, Markee worked with teacher and poet Vince Wixon on this and another documentary on Stafford entitled "The Life of The Poem." After Stafford's death in 1993, Markee made a third documentary about Stafford, "The Methow River Poems," a video about Bill's involvement in writing poems for signs along the Washington Northern Cascade highway.
Markee's next project was again with Vince Wixon and TTTD Productions, a documentary on Japanese American poet and professor, Lawson Inada. Lawson had spent four years in internment camps as a child during World War Two and this experience led to the award winning documentary, "What It Means To Be Free."
In 2000 Markee retired from teaching, forming his own company, Markee Productions and began a two and a half year project working with artists and artisans from Salem Oregon as they transformed a two and a half story stainless steel ball formerly used in the paper-making process into a work of art. "Creating A New World," the documentary was released in 2004.
When he was working on the "Eco-Earth Globe" project, Markee met Jay Dusard who was teaching a photography workshop in Bishop Califonia and a friendship developed that led to a three year project that was finished in the summer of 2005, "Jay Dusard: Keeping The West Western." Being a photographer himself, Markee found working with Jay Dusard a constant education from one of the great master black and white photographers and darkroom printers of the world.
"Every project is an eduction," Markee says. Currently he is working on the fourth draft of a novel and is considering writing a couple of screenplays as well as looking for the next documentary project.
www.jaydusard.com |
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Josh Elliott
Josh Elliott was born in Great Falls, MT in 1973. He was raised to appreciate art and is a third generation artist. His grandfather studied with Grant Wood and dabbled in all sorts of artistic pursuits. His Father, wildlife artist Steve Elliott, gave up a successful career as an ER doctor to become a full-time artist. Josh's father taught and encouraged him. Josh learned the importance of painting from life and discovered his passion for painting outdoors. He sees his outdoor paintings as a reaction to what is in front of him, and feels they act as exercise to sharpen his skills. He considers his studio paintings to be a culmination of everything he has learned from painting out, combined with his own artistic interpretation.
Born in Montana, Josh lived out of state for some time but always felt a deep connection with Montana's landscape and people. Josh now lives with his wife and two daughters in Helena, Montana.
Josh says, "A good painting, to me, is Nature's truth filtered through the artist."
He participates in many shows including: American Masters at Salmagundi Club in New York City, Maynard Dixon Country, Quest for the West at the Eiteljorg Museum, and Western Rendezvous of Art. Josh won the "Palette Award" at the 2008 Quest for the West show. He was awarded the "Edith Hamlin Award" at Maynard Dixon Country in 2007. Josh had a feature article in Southwest Art's February 2009 issue and was one of the artists in the magazine’s “20 Success Stories” article, he was also featured in Art of the West's spotlight on rising stars in the November/ December 2009 issue.
www.JoshElliott.com |
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George Hallmark
Born and raised in North-Central Texas, George Hallmark was an architectural designer and commercial artist before turning to easel painting. Voted the official Texas State Artist in 1988, his work can be found in many prestigious private and corporate collections, including those of Texas Instruments, The Medical Heritage Collection, The Texas Capital, MBNA, and the Capitol in Washington, D.C.. He is an honorary lifetime member of the New Mexico Military Institute Alumni Association.
Hallmark's work has been featured in Art of the West, Southwest Art, U.S. Art and Western Art Collector magazines. George is an annual participant in the Prix de West Exhibition and Sale at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, and the Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles. George also participates in the Eiteljorg Museum's Quest for the West show in Indianapolis and the American Masters Show at the Salmagundi Club in New York.
Hallmark has come full circle to his roots, architecture. His love of subject is obvious in the delineation of stucco walls, tile roofs, and long shadows in his unique painterly style. He is currently completing new work from recent trips to Mexico, France, Spain, and Italy.
Hallmark's originals are represented by Trailside Galleries, Jackson, Wyoming, and Scottsdale, Arizona and Whistle Pik Gallery, Fredericksburg, Texas. His work is reproduced by Somerset Publishing in Houston, Texas.
www.georgehallmark.com |
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Ann Hanson
Ann Hanson grew up in rural Wyoming and still enjoys the country lifestyle. She and her husband Steve built a new home with a panoramic view of the BigHorn Mountains outside of Shell, Wyoming. The best part of the move is the large new studio.
Hanson paints with oils and pastels and is noted for her very realistic and highly detailed paintings. She paints her friends and neighbors doing what they do every day.
www.annhanson.com |
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Steve Kestrel
Through his childhood activities and studying outdoors, Steve Kestrel acquired an extensive knowledge of wildlife. His formal education began at Eastern New Mexico University where he studied natural sciences. He also studied sculpture at Colorado State University, but never completed his degree, claiming the professors were extraordinarily close-minded in their views of art. After leaving Colorado, Kestrel apprenticed for sculptor Boris Gilbertson in Santa Fe.
Since 1982, Kestrel prefers to carve directly in granite, slate, limestone, and sandstone, which are extremely sensitive and difficult materials that require great strength and concentration. He carves the stone without a previously constructed model, explaining that it is an attempt to preserve "the soul of the stone." The sculptures often retain the natural shape of the raw material while clearly evoking the animal subject matter. In addition to working in stone, Kestrel has experimented with bronze casting, which has allowed the creation of more delicate forms that were not possible in stone.
Kestrel is a member of the National Sculpture Society as well as the Society of Animal Artists. His works are recognized in many private and corporate collections and in a number of museums, including the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas, the Gilcrease Museum, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.
www.stevekestrel.com |
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Richard Loffler
Richard Loffler grew up on the wide-open Saskatchewan prairies in central Canada. He became a committed outdoorsman as a teenager absorbing the wonders of the natural world around him. Two local zoos at Saskatoon and Moose Jaw and another larger zoo in Calgary, Alberta became a retreat for observing animals in close quarters, while the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, where he began working in 1978, was a haven to study the beautifully prepared natural history dioramas.
“I have been given nature’s theatre to access freely. I find it a necessary tool in the formation of the idea and the finished work. Working from life affords me controlled confidence. No questions go unanswered”.
At 55, Loffler is a dedicated family man and an avid outdoorsman. He juggles his time between his fieldwork, his studio work and the Montana foundries where he chases some of the castings and oversees the patinas and completed works.
Loffler was accepted into membership with the Society of Animal Artists and the National Sculpture Society, both in New York, in 1989. He continues to show with the Prix de West Invitational Exhibition, where he was chosen for the Robert Lougheed award in 2002. Loffler was invited to exhibit at the 2002 Rendezvous Showcase at the Thomas Gilcrease Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The invitational Salmagundi Club Exhibition, New York, New York. Also he has been invited to exhibit at the Thomas Gilcrease Museum’s 25th anniversary exhibition in the spring of 2004 and 2012. Presently he is working on a 65’ long monumental sculpture called, The Buffalo Trail”; it will be placed in front of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. He has also created a 1 and 1/4 life sized monumental sculpture called OUTLAW, a bounty bucking rodeo bull owned by the Calgary Stampede Ranch; for downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Ribbon cutting was May, 27th, 2010. Furthermore Loffler has taught sculpture classes at the Scottsdale Artists School in Scottsdale, Arizona for 10 years.
“Art is an expression of our innermost thoughts, perceptions and aspirations. It is an extension of society, the happening of our era and the progress of our time. When balanced with truth, knowledge and sensitivity, art holds the virtuous vision of the past, an account of the present and a dream for tomorrow”.
www.richloffler.com |
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Merrill Mahaffey
Merrill Mahaffey was born in 1937 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By the age 8, Mahaffey was already creating color pencil drawings of landscapes near his family home in Grand Junction, Colorado. His college training includes: Mesa Junior College in Grand Junction, Colorado; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; Sacramento State University, California where he earned his Bachelor of Art degree in 1959; and Arizona State University where Merrill Mahaffey received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in 1965.
Mahaffey taught design and art history at the Phoenix College from 1967 until 1983. His reputation as a landscape painter in Arizona began developing in the early 1970s. Merrill Mahaffey's work has evolved from an earlier abstract style to his present realism, reflecting the best traditions of American landscape painting. With lithography and serigraphy, Merrill Mahaffey maintains the same expansive, panoramic quality found in his paintings, rendering certain basic yet complex abstract relationships in nature with the visionary technique that is uniquely his own.
Mahaffey's awards have been numerous: Colorado State Fair, Arizona State Fair, Southwestern Fiesta Biennial Exhibition, 10th Arizona Annual, Four Corners Biennial at the Phoenix Art Museum, Tucson Art Museum and the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. His art has been shown at the Denver Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His painting "Toroweap" is in the Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
Articles have been published about Merrill Mahaffey in publications including Southwest Art, Southwestern Art, Art in America, Art Week, Phoenix Magazine, and Arizona Highways. Northland Press published a book about him titled "Monumental Landscapes" by Rudy Turk, with a forward by Arizona's Governor Bruce Babbitt. Mahaffey's largest commission was given by the City of Phoenix for a 7-by-20 foot painting titled "Panorama From Bright Angel Point". It is displayed at the International Sky Harbor Airport terminal.
www.merrillmahaffey.com |
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Walter Matia
Walter Matia has worked in the exhibits department of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and served as the Vice President of The Nature Conservancy for Land Management. He is a regular participant in the Society of Animal Artists Annual Exhibitions; the Birds in Art Exhibition in Wausau, Wisconsin; the Prix de West Invitational in Oklahoma City; the Coors Western Art Show in Denver and Masters of the American West in Los Angeles. He has received the “Red” Smith Award at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the National Sculpture Society’s Gold and Bronze Medal Awards and the Prix de West James Earle Fraser Award. He is a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society, a Master Signature Member of the Society of Animal Artists and Birds in Art, Master Wildlife Artist. He resides in Dickerson, Maryland with his wife, two children and two sort of trained Labradors.
www.matia.com |
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William Matthews
Born in 1949 in New York City. He grew up in the Bay area. His professional career began in Los Angeles as a graphic artist designing album covers for Warner Bros., and Capitol Records.
www.williammatthewsgallery.com |
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Louisa McElwain
Louisa McElwain has been a resident of New Mexico since 1985. She is an abstract painter who paints Nature, outdoors. She says, "During the process of painting large canvases outdoors, the interaction with Nature introduces insects, particles of plants and soil into the paint. To acknowledge the simultaneous levels of reality which surround me, I sometimes deliberately introduce elements into the paint like bits of broken beer bottle, stones, or charred wood. The subject of my works is paint, the motif is the image, the illusions, the beauty of landscape. I never want to forget that what I am looking at is paint on canvas."
McElwain received her BFA degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Since then she has been in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is in many private and corporate collections which include the Tucson Museum of Art, AT & T, Pepsi-Cola, Nokia and the University of Pennsylvania.
McElwain's work has also been featured in numerous publications, among them Time Magazine, Southwest Art magazine and the Denver Post.
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Ed Mell
Born in 1942, Ed Mell spent an idyllic childhood in what was then the small western city of Phoenix. He attended Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and soon after graduation accepted a position in New York as an art director for a large advertising agency.
Seeking greater artistic freedom,he opened an illustration studio and met with immediate success, establishing his national reputation. Still, Mell felt that he hadn't yet found his voice as an artist.
Mell's creative drive has led him to produce bronze sculptures and print series in addition to his oils.
Ed Mell's work is found in many public and private collections including those of Tri-Star Pictures, Phoenix Art Museum, Kartchner Caverns State Park, Diane Keaton, Arnold Schwartzenegger, and Bruce Babbitt. |
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Dean Mitchell
Dean L. Mitchell was born 1957, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and reared in Quincy, Florida. He is a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio. Mitchell is well known for his figurative works, landscapes and still lifes. In addition to watercolors, he is accomplished in other mediums, including egg temperas, oils and pastels.
Mitchell has been featured in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, American Artist, Artist Magazine, Fine Art International and Art News.
His art can be found in corporate and museum collections across the country, including: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Beach Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri and the Library of Congress.
He has received the American Watercolor Society Gold Medal, Allied Artist of American Gold Medal in Watercolor and Oil, Thomas Moran Award from the Salmagundi Club in New York, Remington Professional League, and for three years in a row the Best in Show Award from the Mississippi Watercolor Society Grand National Competition. In 2004 and 2007, he received the Autry National Center Award for Watercolor at the Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and sale. Mitchell is a member of several professional societies, including the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society.
Dean L. Mitchell is represented by: Hearne Fine Art in Little Rock, Arkansas, Astoria Fine Art in Jackson, Wyoming, J. Willott Gallery in Palm Desert, California, Morris & Whiteside Galleries in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and E & S Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky. |
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John Moyers
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, John’s parents later moved their family to Albuquerque, where he spent the greater portion of his childhood. As the son of a CA artist William Moyers, John was raised in a household that lived and breathed art. His parents were very support of his of his artistic ambition.
John spent a memorable year at the Laguna Beach School of Art. Courses centered on life drawing, and he enrolled in both day and night classes. Next he attended the California Institute for the Fine Arts, with the help of a Walt Disney Studios scholarship. Classes were on animation techniques.
Artist Robert Lougheed invited him to paint wild animals at the Okanagan Game Farm in British Columbia. It was there, in 1979, that Moyers met Terri Kelly, also an artist. They were married in 1982. Today, the Moyers, along with son Joshua, reside in Santa Fe, NM, where they make their living as professional artists. The history that influenced the area has taken root in John’s life and is now at the center of his artwork. |
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Terri Kelly Moyers
Terri Kelly Moyers says she cannot recall a time when she wanted to be anything other than an artist. Since she drew animals as a child, she had consistently directed most of her time and energy toward pursuing that goal, with her early studies at the Alberta College of Art.
Terri Kelly Moyers also believes she has been fortunate to be able to study with a number of fine artists, including Robert Lougheed, Bob Kuhn, Kenneth Riley and Howard Terpning. She also has studied with Ned Jacob, Clarence Tillenius and William Moyers, the noted cowboy artist who is her father-in-law.
From 1978 to 1982, Terri Kelly Moyers made many trips to the Okanagan Game Farm in Penticton, British Columbia, to paint animals from life with other artists from all over North America. It was there that she met John Moyers in 1979, a fellow artist who is now her husband. After their marriage, they continued to take annual trips to Canada to paint, as well as frequent painting expeditions around the West.
Like her husband, Terri Kelly Moyers is an ardent advocate of plein air painting. She is convinced that working out of doors directly from the scene is the finest means of growing as a painter, learning to see and interpret the ever-changing atmosphere and light. She says, "I put things down I think are beautiful and that move me. I want to share what I see with other people and help them have the same pleasure I have. Fifty artists could set up in front of the same scene, and they each would paint different pictures. Each person interprets and edits things in a different way, infusing his or her work with a different quality or emotion."
A profile on Terri Kelly Moyers and her husband in Southwest Art said the couple has the same passionate desire to experience renewal in nature that Edward S. Curtis and Joseph Henry Sharp had. Married for more than two decades, they are now "well schooled mature artist in command of their medium. Their study and understanding of the lessons of the past have allowed them to apply their unique styles to their visions of the inner working of the natural world. |
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Dan Ostermiller
Working in the manner of the great 19th century artists, Dan Ostermiller's connection with wildlife and the outdoors continues a legacy in American sculpture. Dan gained an absolute understanding of the anatomy of animals while working with his father, a taxidermist, and this understanding allows him to sculpt freely without thinking about proportions, allowing the essence of what he wants to convey to come through. Dan is less concerned with the physique of his subjects as he is with the moods, personalities, and general shapes of the compostions, and he establishes a fluidity of motion and creates expression by manipulating animals' features. In fact, the titles of his works indicate not the type of animal, but the individual emotions or characters of the figures. The surface patterns and patinas of the pieces complete the effect as they capture light and lead the eye around the curves and musculature of his subjects. |
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Howard Post
Known for his paintings of cattle, cowboys, rodeo arenas, and ranch life executed with an unique aerial perspective and sun-drenched hues, Howard Post is an impressionist who portrays the contemporary West in a modern fashion. Howard Post, a native Arizonan, was born and raised on a ranch near Tucson. Not surprisingly, he gravitated toward the life of a cowboy. The family ranch raised rodeo stock, and as Howard Post gained experience, he started to enter rodeo competitions. In time, he became an Arizona High School All-Round Rodeo Champion, a member of the University of Arizona rodeo team, and eventually, a competitor with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. After Howard Post completed bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in fine art at the University of Arizona, he taught there for two years.
Howard Post worked as a commercial artist until 1980, when he decided to paint what he knew best, Arizona’s ranch traditions. Viewers of Howard Post’s oils or pastels respond to a bird’s-eye view of cattle clustered in a corral, cowboys perched in fence rails, or a distant ranch house. This higher perspective endows people and animals in the painting with stronger shapes and patterns. Howard Post draws from a collection of several thousand slides, from imagination, and then starts a canvas without preliminary sketches. Up to six colors might be used, painted over a dark background. His work is defined by orderly, strong shadow patterns cast by the figures of cattle, cowboys, trees, or fences.
Howard Post’s oils and pastels have been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States. Many of his paintings are represented in public, corporate, and private collections. |
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Cynthia Rigden
Cynthia Rigden grew up surrounded by horses and cattle on an 8,000 acre ranch that has been in her family since 1902. Her roots in Arizona and the West are deep. Yet she doesn't call herself a "western artist." Rather she is an artist who comes from the West.
In a profile in The Equine Image, she said,"My work isn't western in the sense that it's cowboys and Indians and shoot em' ups. Its western in the fact I live here and my animals, my models, are mostly here." In addition to her renowned sculptures of horses, Rigden is also known for her sculptures of Longhorn cattle.
Rigden believes her long association with horses and cattle gives her work an edge. From her daily contacts with the animals, she knows they have distinctive personalities, and with her insight into "horse psychology," Rigden tries to reflect these differences in her art.
She says," I like to catch the subtle attitude of the horse, but I don't try to romanticize them I believe the gracefulness and the form of the horse speak for themselves. And if I can capture that in my work, then I've captured the essence of horses."
In a 1997 profile in Farm and Ranch Living, she said, "During the course of a typical day, I might see a cow pony or a big old Longhorn doing something that makes me want to capture it in bronze. Of course, just seeing something doesn't mean I can sit right down and sculpt it. I often have to do a lot of research to get the details right. Details are very important. Folks who know horses and cattle will see right away if I get something wrong. So I have a room full of close-up photographs of every part of an animal's anatomy, from its ears to its hooves."
Though she has been interested in painting since childhood - her grandmother's watercolors are still known in the Prescott area - her passion for sculpting waited until college. "I don't remember ever wanting to be anything but an artist," she said. At Arizona State University, the classes she wanted to take were filled, so she took a course in sculpting.
She has been profiled in Southwest Art, Arizona Highways, Contemporary Western Artist, and The Texas Cowboy. She was among women featured in Barbara Van Cleve's book, Hard Twist Western Ranch Women. She was featured in an article in the May/June 2000 issue of the Art of the West.
She has exhibited in the American Women Artist and the West, Loveland Sculpture in the Park, and the Texas Cowboy Artist Awards Show. |
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Bill Schenck
Billy Schenck has been known internationally for the past 33 years as one of the originators of the contemporary “Pop” western movement and an American painter who incorporates techniques from Photo-Realism with a Pop Art sensibility to both exalt and poke fun at images of the West.
Like the heroes he idolized in B-Westerns, Schenck might well be called the “Good Badman” of Western American art. Early in his career he became known for appropriating cinematic imagery, which he reproduced in a flattened, reductivist style, where colors are laid side-by-side rather than blended or shadowed.
Drawing upon narrative tensions that have attracted mass audiences to western fiction and movies, Schenck added hot colors, surreal juxtapositions, and stylized patterning to explore clashes between wilderness and civilization, the individual and community, nature and culture, freedom and restriction.
Current career highlights for the artist include inclusion in the recently opened exhibit at the Denver Art Museum entitled “Western Horizons”, Landscapes from the contemporary realism collection. A retrospective of serigraphs created by Schenck from 1971 through 1996 opens February 12, 2011 at the Tucson Museum of Art.
Museum collections include the Mesa Southwest Museum, Mesa AZ, The Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson AZ, The Denver Art Museum, Denver CO, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Anaheim, CA, Museum of the Southwest, Midland TX, Albuquerque Fine Arts Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Private collections include the estate of Malcolm Forbes, Steve Forbes, Chris Everett, Elaine Horwitch, Ivan Karp, Stacey Keach, Louis Meisel, Martina Navritalova, Lawrence Rockefeller, the estate of Fritz Scholder and Sylvester Stallone. Works by the artist are held in the corporate collections of American Airlines, I.B.M., Wells Fargo Bank, Hilton Hotels, Sturn Ruger and The National Bank of Switzerland.
“What has remained constant throughout Schenck’s career is his individuality in dealing with the subject matter of the west. Using the artistic formula of classic western film direction and the photographically reliant systems of contemporary art, he has bridged two genres that resonate with the American experience. Rather than standing as an outside observer to the realities and myths of the west, Schenck is a part of the scene, figuratively and literally. From early depictions of cinematic cowboys to real-life cowboys and cowgirls to poetic reveries about the Native American existence in the Southwest, Schenck melds the real with the imagined, autobiography with fantasy.”
www.schencksouthwest.com/ |
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Bob "Shoofly" Shufelt
New Mexican cowboy artist ROBERT "SHOOFLY" SHUFELT'S graphite drawings have become an important thread in the fabric of Western Art, earning world wide recognition. His work illuminates the bare bones of an artist's craft and portrays the physical evidence of his perception. They are celebrations of a dreamer who has allowed his dream to become reality with all its grit and honesty, yet he still finds the work endlessly interesting and satisfying. He has an artist's vision of cowboys as they can only be around another cowboy, unposed and unself-conscious. They are men who practice their vision of superiority in whatever they do, leaving it up to the rest of us to determine whether they're working or playing. These disciples of the "cowboy way" are Shoofly's top hands and his work is forever honored by their friendship.
www.shooflyart.com |
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Gary Ernest Smith
Gary Ernest Smith was born and raised in a relatively isolated farm community 25 miles northeast of Baker City, Oregon. His interests and intensity for painting began at an early age and progressed through college degrees, numerous commissions and awards to a full time pursuit of painting.
The commission work that dominated the early years eventually stifled his creativity. Dissatisfaction with this career direction forced him to reach inward and search beyond popular style and accepted artistic norms to a personal vision.
Following years of artistic training and experimentation, subject matter began to emerge based on the artist's background of a rural life-style that celebrates the values of hard work and self-reliance. These aspects of Smith's life came together and became the catalyst for his distinctive style. Living in the west, his work is primarily of that region, but it is not western in the traditional sense.
Although it defies precise classification, the artist considers his style "minimal" and seeks to express the essence and simplicity of each subject. Whatever the focus might be, his work expresses the artistic elements of bold form and color. These two components become the vehicle that melds the style and subject into a symbolic visual language, expanding the artistic appeal beyond the west to captivate the attention of a sophisticated urban audience.
Smith paints at his studio and home nestled in the mountains of the Bull River in Highland, Utah. Here he and his wife, Judy, a professional musician, live and work amidst fields, gardens and open spaces. They have four children. |
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Don Stinson
Don Stinson is known for his panoramic vistas that explore the physical and cultural landscapes of the West, his most recent work examines the dynamic, elemental and creative forces that have shaped and continue to shape the terrain. Stinson received his B.F.A. from Colorado State University and his M.F.A. from Tufts University/School of Fine Arts in Boston. He was the recipient of a Colorado Council on the Arts Director's Grant and his work is placed in the collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Art in Embassies Program in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He has been featured both in extensive solo and group exhibitions in Colorado and Texas with prominent showings at the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, Wyoming and Artist Space, New York. Don lives and works in Evergreen, Colorado.
Stinson's current inspiration emanates from the elements of earth, air, fire and water in combination with man-made structures within the environment. Painting subjects such as, the ice park in Ouray, Colorado, a bonfire on the Black Rock Desert during the Burning Man festival, a wind farm on the Llano Estacado northwest of Abilene, Texas and satellite dishes above Marfa, Texas, each supply Stinson with the visual contrasts between human pursuits and the sublime expanses of the western landscapes. The artist's encompassing views reveal much about our shared myths of the West, notions of progress, individual creativity and the subsequent surrender to the elements themselves.
www.donstinson.com |
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Kent Ullberg
A native of Sweden, Kent Ullberg is recognized as one of world’s foremost wildlife sculptors. He studied at the Swedish Konstfack University College of Art in Stockholm and at museums in Germany, the Netherlands and France. He lived for seven years in Botswana, Africa and served the last four years there as curator at the Botswana National Museum and Gallery. He has made his home permanently in the United States where he now lives on Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Texas. He also maintains a studio in Loveland, Colorado.
Ullberg is a member of numerous important art organizations that have honored him with many prestigious awards. These include, in New York City: the Allied Artists of America, the National Arts Club, the National Sculpture Society, and the Society of Animal Artists. In 1990 his peers elected him a full academician (NA), thus making him the first wildlife artist since John James Audubon to receive on of the greatest tributes in American art. His memberships outside New York include: the American Society of Marine Artists, the Society of Wildlife Art of the Nations (SWAN) in Sandhurst, UK, and the National Academy of Western Art in Oklahoma City, OK which awarded him the Prix de West, the foremost recognition in western art.
While he has completed hundreds of works on a small scale, he is perhaps best known for the monumental works he has executed for museums and municipalities from Stockholm, Sweden, to Cape Town, S. Africa. His Fort Lauderdale, FL and Omaha, NE installations are the largest wildlife bronze compositions ever done, spanning several city blocks.
In 1993 and once again most recently in 2008, Ullberg received the Henry Hering Medal from the National Sculpture Society for outstanding collaboration between architect and sculptor in a monumental sculpture.
Ullberg’s work has been shown and can be found in major museums and corporate headquarters around the globe, incl: the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden; the Salon d’Automne, Paris, France; the National Gallery in Botswana, Africa; the National Geographic Society, Washington DC; the Exhibition Hall, Beijing, China; the Guildhall, London, UK; and many more. His sculptures can also be found in the private collections of world leaders and celebrities.
Kent Ullberg is a major supporter of many wildlife conservation efforts. In 1996 he received the Rungius Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the National Museum of Wildlife Art, given to artists, authors and conservationists who have made significant contributions to the interpretation and conservation of wildlife and its habitat.
www.kentullberg.net |
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Curt Walters
Artist Curt Walters of Sedona, Arizona, is best known as a plein-aire impressionist. Recognized worldwide for his impeccable interpretation of the Grand Canyon, Art of the West magazine was first to herald him as the "Greatest Living Grand Canyon Artist" in 1997. Since then, Art of the West has gone on to include Walters as one of Eight True Masters, saying: "...many museums and collectors don't feel their collections are complete unless they include a Walters' painting."
Walters has long had an eye--and desire--for art. When he was 14, his sister was given a paint set for her birthday. "It took me about two minutes to steal it from her," he quips. From there, he took to copying the brushstrokes of the paintings on the walls of their New Mexican farmhouse, and at the age of 15, Walters sold his first piece.
Four years later, the fledgling young artist visited the Grand Canyon for the first time, and so began a lifelong love affair. "I get the same feeling today as I did that first time, thirty-five years ago."
www.curtwalters.com |
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Benjamin Wu
Born in 1961, Benjamin Wu studied art at the Guangzhou Fine Art Institute in China from 1978 to 1985. Upon completion of the oil painting program in the institute, he became a teacher at the Guangzhou Fine Art Institute. Although he’s honored to receive many compliments for his work, he realized, one must learn from the best to be the best. That’s when he decided to further his studies in the United States.
Benjamin Wu pursued his studies in painting and received his MFA degree from Academy of Art College in San Francisco in 1991. Since then, he worked as a freelance illustrator and continued to pursue fine art.
Benjamin Wu's exquisite paintings have garnered many awards in exhibitions and competitions.
In 2006, he received the Merit Award for Portrait and Figurative from the Asian Art Exhibition in Tokyo.
Quickly following that, he received the Merit Award for his still life from Salon International 2007 in San Antonio, Texas.
In 2009, he was the Best of Show winner for Salon International 2009.
Benjamin Wu was among the one hundred selected finalists from 30 countries in the International Salon Show at Art Renewal Center in 2007, 2008 and 2009-10.
In 2010, Benjamin Wu was the featured artist in the Nov/Dec’s issue of Art of the West magazine.
In 2011, Benjamin Wu won the Best in Show award at Scottsdale Salon of Fine Art at Legacy Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Benjamin Wu is a member of Oil Painters of America (OPA).
http://benjaminwufineart.com/about |
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