Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Southwest Art

MANITOU GALLERIES is known for shows with imaginative concepts and titles that put a smart, engaging spin on the featured artworks. Recently, though, the gallery staff set themselves the challenge, in light of the pandemic, to do even more when planning this year’s exhibitions. “What is our social responsibility?” says associate director Cyndi Hall, explaining the query that guided them in their decisions. “We felt like our shows should truly touch the hearts of our artists and collectors alike.” Such heartfelt efforts reveal themselves in this month’s show at the gallery’s Palace Avenue location, titled Til Art Do Us Part. Inspired by Valentine’s Day, it brings together the works of six long-married couples: PJ Garoutte and Don Brackett; Nealy Riley and David Frederick Riley; Sushe Felix and Tracy Felix; Carole…

AS AN ARTIST WHO has painted in fully half of the states in this country, including all of the western states, Lorenzo Chavez knows there is profound beauty everywhere. And then there are places that are not only beautiful but also call up memories rich with emotion, associations, and even ancestral history. For Chavez, these are the landscapes whose layers of meaning make them even more inspiring and enjoyable to paint, even as he revisits them again and again, seeing them each time with deeper appreciation. Arroyos, or dry creek beds, are places like this. For Chavez, who was raised in New Mexico, they bring to mind the endless hours he spent running through the sand as a distance runner in high school. Their meandering courses, lined with desert plants…

PAINTING THE LANDSCAPE MIGHT SEEM LIKE A FAIRLY OBJECTIVE PURSUIT; AFTER ALL, IT INVOLVES CAREFUL OBSERVATION OF LANDFORMS, THE SKY, AND OTHER ELEMENTS OF THE VISIBLE WORLD. But in fact, capturing the landscape is a very personal and subjective endeavor. Each artist perceives the nuances of colors differently; each brings their individual experiences in other scenic places along with them to a given painting spot. Perhaps most important, each painter pours their own particular emotions onto the canvas or paper. We’ve rounded up a group of talented landscape artists in the following pages, and we hope their personal interpretations resonate with you. Discover today’s landscape artists John Bowdren “Neap Tide” is from my recent gray painting series, I developed several gray scale palettes in oils from different blacks and whites…

JOE BARBIERI admires artists who paint loosely and impressionistically, but he admits that he is a confirmed “detail” man through and through. “I gave up years ago trying to be something I am not,” Barbieri says. “I just paint what I see and feel about particular subjects that appear beautiful and worthy of painting to me.” Unlike some artists who narrow their focus to one genre, such as landscapes, Texas-based Barbieri relishes painting a variety of subjects. His body of work features everything from elegant still lifes in the tradition of the Dutch masters to scenes of American cowboys herding cattle. Last year one of his western scenes, INCOMING, won the Gold Medal at the annual Bosque Art Classic show and sale at the Bosque Arts Center in Clifton, TX.…

ON A FIRE ESCAPE above the bustling streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, a woman hangs laundry out to dry. The colorful assortment of T-shirts, trousers, and undergarments contrasts gaily with the painted-steel landings and ladders, the makeshift clotheslines, and the rich ornamentation of the structure, built in the years following the massive 1906 earthquake. Enhancing the impeccably detailed scene even more are the shadows cast by the bright morning sun—a latticework as sharply defined as the building, the clothing, and the dignified mother or grandmother performing her daily tasks. Yes, the scene faithfully captures A MOMENT IN TIME, as the photorealistic acrylic painting is titled. But it also expresses so much more. “One of my motivations in choosing my imagery is to celebrate and call attention to the beauty in…

ONE DAY in a workshop, a student asked Marjorie Hicks how to paint something white against a white background. In response, Hicks quickly assembled a collection of various white objects in order to demonstrate the answer: three stuffed bunnies, a porcelain dog, and a clear glass full of milk. The impromptu painting eventually morphed into a whimsical still life titled STUDY IN WHITE. Recently, that spontaneous tableau was juried into the American Impressionist Society’s first-ever Online Juried Exhibition. “I love teaching as much as I love painting,” Hicks says. “With teaching, you are forced to paint in a clear fashion.” The Tennessee-based painter says that drawing and sketching have been some of her lifelong passions. It wasn’t until she studied with widely renowned master painter David Leffel, though, that she…

FOR AN AUTUMN SCENE set against shimmering golden aspens, Terri Kelly Moyers was sketching a blanket-draped Native American man on horseback when a gust of wind blew up. The blanket flared like a sail and the model leaned forward, spreading his arms to catch it. “It was beautiful,” the artist says. “One of those little moments you don’t plan on, but it can make all the difference.” The painting’s title, A SUDDEN CHANGE, has meaning on multiple levels: the rider’s response to the capriciousness of weather, the artist’s happy use of an unexpected occurrence, and the changeable nature of life itself. “Sometimes we have to readjust and go with the flow,” she says. Moyers—who now lives in California after spending many years in New Mexico—is one of nine award-winning painters…

A BIKER pedals down a narrow lane, wedged between an oncoming trolley car and a bus. In his left hand he balances an umbrella. It’s a rainy day in downtown San Francisco—puddles, soggy streets, and other vehicles are all shrouded in cool gray light. In MARKET STREET HUSTLE, artist Scott W. Prior captures both the high energy of the big city and the somber mood of the cloudy skies. There is an immediacy and spontaneity to the artwork that invites viewers to step inside the painting for a moment. “I want viewers to feel like they are right there with me,” Prior says. “If I get the wow factor going for myself, I know I am onto something good, and people will feel it. I want the viewer to say…