There’s a new wave in western art called the New West. It recycles the old themes of cowboys and Indians, wildlife, landscape and historic figures. But it tends toward a different treatment, usually in brighter colors, flatter design with an advertiser, poster-like quality and shallow space or no space. Gone is a sense of atmosphere, distance, natural light and complexity. Instead, each painting aims towards a single statement with one punch and it’s gone. Often there’s a sense of irony, as though we don’t really believe these western themes are valid anymore, but we still love them.
As a landscape painter I was employing some of these treatments on the western landscape 40 years ago. I loved Matisse. I loved Art Nouveau. I liked the National Park posters from the 1930’s. I’m glad I did work like that, even selling some of it, though 40 years ago was too early to try it in Jackson. Now its all the rage. Traditional work (the kind that I have been perfecting for over 40 years) is passé. There are some painters, like George Carlson or Tim Lawson, who seem to have struck a great balance, where the distance and the flatness, the simplicity and the complexity, the atmosphere and the feeling of the paint are all in balance in a beautiful way. That is something I am aiming for. I don’t think steering my work in the direction of what’s selling in Jackson is not going to be good for my health.
Also, I like complexity in design. Somebody needs to be making symphonies rather than a 3-minute pop song. There should be a theme that is developed, repeated with variety, rising and falling, softer and louder, order and complexity. Older painters could do this on an epic scale. Think Bierstadt, Moran, Turner, Jacob Van Ruisdael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio or Titian. This is a big task and I don’t know if anybody will care. But…. forward!