Gordon McConnell

Hanging Fire

2017

Johnny Defeo’s work belongs to the concept of souvenir, attempting to capture the experiences he has in the natural world, where he feels free and most at home. His paintings and rug...

Johnny Defeo’s work belongs to the concept of souvenir, attempting to capture the experiences he has in the natural world, where he feels free and most at home. His paintings and rug...

This is a framed original painting. Biography Creating paintings inspired by western movies and by Remington and Russell, he is a native of the West, having been born and raised in rural Colorado. He studied art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas; at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he earned a Master's Degree in 1979. For two decades he worked as curator at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, before leaving in 1999 to begin work as a full-time painter and independent curator. His work is in the collections of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; the Art Museum of Missoula; and the Yellowstone Art Museum; the Federal Reserve Bank in Helena, Montana; and the Deaconness Medical Center in Billings, Montana. Artist Statement For a long time, the images in my paintings have been identifiably, even iconically, western-stagecoaches and false-front main streets, poker games and gun battles, cowboys, Indians, cavalry troopers and horses, all suspended in a choreographed matrix of dancing paint. Distinct from the traditional western genre-which inventories the minutia of cowboy gear or tells sentimental stories of rangeland romance-my paintings embody something more elemental and timeless, animated and abstract. The images tend to be stark, graphic, and charged with painterly energy. Though they are derived from fugitive television images, the paintings, as paintings, are still, silent and non-ephemeral. They register the technological transfer of primal shadows onto the electroluminescent screens of our collective consciousness, a shimmering blur of perception and memory transposed in an interchange of gesture and description, painted marks simultaneously arresting and embodying movement. I've always liked what a painter friend, Marc Vischer, wrote in 1988 about an early group of my western paintings. Now, I'm fourteen years closer to actualizing my vision for this work, and his astute remarks seem more pertinent today than they did then. He wrote in part, "For McConnell, a searing light emanates from a new desert: that of television. And from that most desolate backdrop, he salvages fragments from a movie world that spoke of honor in a land that was lawless. In a romantic sense, McConnell's works are a visual seance. Figures, like specters distorted through intense heat waves, are captured from their eternity of 24 frames a second. Their shapes and shadows are brought back into a radically different world and given substance and texture. It is an impossible attempt to freeze them, to arrest the present's ceaseless molestation of the past, to close off the continuum. Sometimes this is done darkly and thickly as an emphatic gesture of permanence. In other works a few light strokes quickly applied suggest the ephemeral nature of film and perhaps the fleeting nature of our own lives." I have been examining new imagery in my paintings, drawing subjects from Mexican graphic novelas, modern women and men of romance and mystery from the mid-20th century, motorcycles and airplanes. The end titles of movies, stated in several languages, have inspired me to begin a new series of cross-media translations in both acrylic and watercolor. My paintings have long begun where the movies have left off. The elements of water and light co-mingle in some pieces from this series and in others which take the viewpoint of a swimmer, watching other swimmers from the wet side of this aqueous membrane, looking up toward the light. My arrival in Montana in 1982 brought me into intimate contact with some of the most storied places of the historic West and also gave me the opportunity to study the paintings of two of the most influential codifiers of western imagery, Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell...

I am an artist and painter exploring female-centric visions and stories of violence, resistance, and tribulation inspired by women’s complicated history in the American West. Growing up in the foothills of Northern Colorado, the bed of the Rocky Mountains near Fort Collins encouraged a strong relationship between the natural landscape and myself which heavily defied the alienating feelings in relation to ongoing urbanization of the Colorado Piedmont and a burgeoning suburban landscape. - Grace...

Piggott finds resonance and beauty in the familiar. His subjects, anchored in the stuff of the every day, are quietly captured in a moment of time. Each composition speaks to the art...

Piggott finds resonance and beauty in the familiar. His subjects, anchored in the stuff of the every day, are quietly captured in a moment of time. Each composition speaks to the art...

Archaic Hercules Skinning a Rabbit, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 53.14 H x 55.11 W in. 135 H x 140 W cm In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and his numerous far-ra...

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Roxbury” is a stunning landscape of architecture and city deleterious. Moon-Joo Lee received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Department of Painting in 2003 and received the schools' Top Prize with this painting. “Roxbury” subsequently was on display at Chrysler’s World Headquarters for a period of time. While at Cranbrook she began to document the ubiquitous construction sites skirting Detroit and similar cities across the country. The transitory urban fabric became her compelling subject, emblematic of fluctuating socio-economic conditions and a widespread culture of uncertainty. - Joe Houston of Cranbrook Art Museum. Lee’s painting “Roxbury” captures the cycle of construction, destruction and reconstruction that perpetually transforms the American city scene. In this image, a business that boasts NEW in its signage is already in the process of being destroyed. This could be a scene of bombing or environmental damage, but per Moon-Joo Lee’s aesthetics, the mountainous terrain of assorted refuse is there to remind the viewer that perhaps new and better do not necessarily mean that nor do they guarantee positive change. Lee's contemporary landscape underscores the extent to which nature has been supplanted by a manufactured environment, portraying rampant cultural transformation as a modern expression of manifest destiny. Moon-Joo Lee is one of the many well-known artists who attended The Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, that was designed by architect and faculty member, Eliel Saarinen who collaborated with Charles and Ray Eames on chair and furniture design. It is the country’s top ranked, graduate-only program in architecture, design and fine art. Each year, just 75 students are invited to study and live on the landmark Saarinen-designed campus which features: private studios, state-of-the art workshops, the renowned Cranbrook Art Museum and 300 acres of forests, lakes and streams, all a short drive from the city of Detroit. The focus at Cranbrook is on studio practice in one of ten disciplines including Architecture, 2D and 3D Design, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media, and Sculpture. The program is anchored by celebrated Artists- and Designers-in-Residence, one for each discipline, all of whom live and practice on campus alongside the graduate students. Numerous creative artists who are alumni of Cranbrook include: Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Jack Lenor Larsen, Donald Lipski, Duane Hanson, Nick Cave, Hani Rashid, George Nelson, Urban Jupena (Nationally recognized fiber artist), Artis Lane (the first African-American artist to have her sculpture, "Sojourner Truth," commissioned for the Emancipation Hall in the Capital Visitor Center in Washington DC), Cory Puhlman (televised Pastry Chef extraordinaire), Thom O’Connor (Lithographs), Paul Evans (Brutalist-inspired sculpted metal furnishings), Eugene Caples (small bronze images/abstract), Morris Brose (Bronze Sculptures), Herb Babcock (blown glass), Larry Butcher (mixed media), Lauren Anais Hussey (Abstract), Andrea Eis (film, photography), Lilian Swann Saarinen (Sculpture), Douglas Semivan...

Coulombe-Bégin's dynamic acrylic on canvas works seek to produce a metamorphic interpretation of the artist's inner identity. Her paintings make ample use of contrasting colors to cr...

Luis Miguel Valdes (Cuba, 1949) 'La soledad de las columnas', 2018 oil on canvas 55.2 x 181.2 in. (140 x 460 cm.) ID: VAL-334

Gyre acrylic, spray paint on canvas 80" x 96" 2022 Part of the New Minority Series Dennis Jones was first introduced to the use of a bidet while being extremely ill in Hurghada, Egypt. He has played the game of ‘Jenga’ with prostitutes in Phuket, Thailand. Once he hiked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim and back in twelve hours. Jones has also visited fifty US National Parks. The work of Dennis Jones is growth oriented. There is diversity among his oeuvre and much risk in such an approach. Eschewing a ‘signature style’ that he considers to be boring, creatively limiting and market driven, he prefers to consider how method and expression intermingle and form a conceptual basis. A cursory glance may consider his prodigious output to lack focus, but a deeper reading reveals that he remains true to himself and allows his work to take him where it needs to go. There has always been the presence of a figure in his work, either implied, or directly visible. One can trace several years of development from his interest in figurative and cartoon-like imagery in, Toyland (2006), through his foray into text based work (2007-13) and a later influence of abstraction (2012-18). Following this trajectory brings one to his current body of work that combines figuration, cartoons and abstraction. He is a visual artist, educator, and architect. Each of the ‘hats’ he wears directly influence his work. He states that ‘a fascination with an integration of material, process and expression, truth of emotion and visually communicating thought are what sustain and drive him as an artist. Jones has participated in over seventy solo and group shows that include local, national and international venues. His creative output includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, videos, photos, books, teaching and residential architecture. Jones’ work was selected to be included in the New American Paintings 2019 Midwest Competition Publication, juried by Staci Boris, Associate Director of Exhibitions, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, his focus is on a growing body of paintings, in mixed media, on canvas that combine abstraction, figuration and cartoon imagery. Jones had a one person exhibition at the University of Michigan in September through December of 2018. A review of the show can be read on the page titled, Candyland Review. Earlier the same year, He curated an exhibition titled, SIX, that opened in January of 2018, at The Janice Charach Gallery; a five thousand square foot space, located in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The exhibition featured the work of six Detroit artists and provided adequate space for each to show a body of work…essentially six individual shows in one space. Selected venues that have shown Jones’ work include: The OK Harris Gallery, New York; Galerie Protege, NY; The Mary Washington Galleries, Mary Washington University, Fredericksburg, Maryland; The Kraft Lieberman Gallery, Chicago; The Drift Gallery, Portsmouth, NH; The Project Room, Lincoln, NE; The Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor, Canada; Artcite, Windsor, CA; The Thames Gallery, Chatham, Ontario, Canada; The Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, CA; Definitely Superior Gallery, Thunder Bay, ON, CA; Gallery Lambton, Sarnia, ON, CA, WKP Kennedy, North Bay...

Doug Ohlson began his education in a number of small colleges, and a three year period in the U.S. Marines before graduating from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in fine art....