Painting of the Day, January 12, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"In the past, I would have an idea for a painting and hold to that idea through to the finish.  I could pretty much see the end result before I started.  There were no surprises.  But now my understanding of the process is that the idea is just the first impulse.  From that first impulse forward, improvisation takes over.  The end result is not about that first idea, but is instead a record of all those impulses along the way.  Each stroke of paint carries emotion and power.  I work in a loose, painterly style in part because I want the viewer to see the process and not hide it behind 'finish;' for the viewer to maybe even feel how a particular piece of paint was put down.”  -- Walt Gonske

Walt Gonske, Arroyo Seco Adobes, oil on canvas, 30 x 32 in. Credit: © Courtesy of the artist and Nedra Matteucci

Painter of the Day, January 10, 2012

Reuben Kirkham:  Pioneer Artist

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comReuben Kirkham was a pioneer artist—part of a first generation of Utah artists whose brush strokes provide an enduring documentation of life on the fringes of civilization. Arriving in Salt Lake by mule train in 1868, Kirkham took his place among a handful of archaic and self-taught artists. The young man would devote the last eighteen years of his life to learning his craft and producing volumes of sketches and scenes for numerous theatre and opera productions, panels for his panoramas and easel works. His works express the romantic idealization of nature common in landscape paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, but also bear the stamp of his unique style and the challenging environment and vistas of the west.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comUntil now it was thought that only a few of his works had survived, but through diligent research and detective work, historian Donna L. Poulton has uncovered many sketches and oil paintings that further attest to Kirkham’s remarkable body of work. Many of those will be made public for the first time in this book. Several important paintings, found in lamentable condition, have now been restored and preserved by the Springville Museum of Art as a result of her important research. Furthermore, Poulton discovered another facet of Kirkham’s work: that of photographer, mastering a relatively new medium and using his natural sense of framing, composition, texture and contrast to document life in the untamed west.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comIn all, this engrossing work provides a moving and often awe-inspiring portrait of a man who overcame considerable odds to develop and exploit his God-given talents. It sheds new light as well on the artist’s remarkable, multiple abilities, while describing in often heartbreaking detail the life and times of a man who truly did suffer for his art. A complete painting raisonné accompanies this book.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comCredit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.com

Image of the Day: January 8, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"Art...is a kind of tyrant; it pushes you around. It came to me dressed in wanderlust." -- Gustave Baumann

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), Aspen Thicket, woodcut.  Credit: Modernbungalow.comTrained at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Munich, Baumann came west in 1915 to attend the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco where he won a gold medal for his woodcut.  After traveling through the southwest, Baumann found Santa Fe and ideal place to live and settled there in 1917. He remained there for the next 50 years designing prints of the colorful and mystical landscape. 

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), Santuarion—Chimayo, 1924, woodcut. Credit: antiquesandthearts.comHis woodblock prints are signed with the familiar image of a hand opened over the heart.

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), The Processional, 1930, color woodcut with aluminum leaf, 13 x 13 in. Credit: annexgalleries

Painting of the Day, January 7, 2012

By Donna Poulton

Zane Grey “had the knack of tying his characters into the land, and the land into the story. There were other Western writers who had fast and furious action, but Zane Grey was the one who could make the action not only convincing but inevitable, and somehow you got the impression that the bigness of the country generated a bigness of character.” -- Earl Stanley Gardner

Credit: ebay.comTo accompany the expansive stories of the west penned by Grey, his publisher insisted on using the best illustrators working at the time. Herbert Buck Dunton, a popular artist and illustrator, was hired to illustrate Wanderer of the Wasteland, published in 1923. The hard cover, book jacket, a frontispiece and two illustrations were included by Dunton. W. Herbert  “Buck” Dunton was a successful illustrator working for Scribner’s, Harper’s, as well as for Zane Grey. He was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists and eventually gave up illustrating to concentrate on easel painting.

Credit: ebay.comCredit: ebay.coThe book was made into a movie by Paramount; it was their first feature length technicolor film.  This poster, by an unknown illustrator, emphasized the color and drama in both the book and the film.

Credit: moviepostershop.comYou may also want to browse through previous posts:

Painting of the Day, November 27, 2011

Painting of the Day, November 3, 2011

Zane Grey's Illustrators: Lillian Wilhelm Smith

Painting of the Day, January 5, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"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." – Len Chmiel

Len Chmiel, An Afternoon to Enjoy, oil, 21 x 32 in. Credit: Len ChmielColorado artist Len Chmiel continues to attract the attention of the most important collectors and galleries in the west. Considered an artists’ artist, he is a master of color and design. In his painting, An Afternoon to Enjoy, the real and the ideal have been combined with sharp contrasts of light and darks to depict this layered winterscape.  This painting is currently on exhibition at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado.

Credit: lenchmiel.com. Hardcover, 200 pages, 150 color plates, $65.00 retail, Release date: December 2011, Distributed by University of New Mexico Press