Visions West Contemporary Animal Paintings

Les Thomas' animal paintings tend to play with the relationship between culture and nature. The special encaustic wax finish that he applies, he explains, "may very well pertain to m...

Les Thomas' animal paintings tend to play with the relationship between culture and nature. The special encaustic wax finish that he applies, he explains, "may very well pertain to m...

Enthralled with the lore and spirituality of American Indian cultures, his work often depicts these traditional subjects in nontraditional ways. Hawkins captures the raw sense of ele...

Enthralled with the lore and spirituality of American Indian cultures, his work often depicts these traditional subjects in nontraditional ways. Hawkins captures the raw sense of ele...

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...

For the last 10 years Travis Walker has made landscape paintings about Jackson Hole, a place that never ceases to inspire him to pick up his brushes. He works on location, capturing the essence of the seemingly mundane scenes around town: an old salon, a decaying house with a fence made of skis, a vintage...

Robert McCauley was born and raised in Mt. Vernon, Washington. He graduated from Western Washington University in 1969, and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree from Washington St...

This is a gallery wrap, oil on canvas piece. It could be framed if someone wished to do so.

"By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me to push the boundaries of what a past/presen...

"By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me to push the boundaries of what a past/presen...

"By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me to push the boundaries of what a past/presen...

This is an unframed original painting on paper. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the myst...

This is a float framed original painting on panel. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the m...

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 painting on paper. 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...

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...

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...

This is an unframed original painting on wood panel with painted edges. Artist Statement: My interest is in creating a permanent record of the impermanence of our world. In consid...

This is an unframed original painting on paper. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the myst...

This is an unframed original painting on paper. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the myst...

This is a float framed original painting on panel. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the m...

This is a float framed original painting on panel. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the m...

Electric Coffin is a Seattle-based artist collaboration between Duffy De Armas and Stefan Hofmann. Electric Coffin is coded within art history and ideologies...

This is a float framed original painting on panel. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the m...

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...

"Nature is my muse. Animals are losing their habitat and they are, at the very least, confronted by or threatened by all of our discards. Though the birds in my paintings are not vic...

"Nature is my muse. Animals are losing their habitat and they are, at the very least, confronted by or threatened by all of our discards. Though the birds in my paintings are not vic...

"Nature is my muse. Animals are losing their habitat and they are, at the very least, confronted by or threatened by all of our discards. Though the birds in my paintings are not vic...

Lisa Bostwick has had pieces exhibited at the Legion of Honor, Napa Valley Museum, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the de Young Museum. Her North Am...

This painting is oil on 7 canvas panels, each 7 feet high and is 30 feet wide TOTAL and is monochromatic black, after Desportes, Brascassat, Weenix, Hondecoeter, Oudry, Landseer, Snyders, van Huysum, Bellini, and van Es. The title references Psalm 23...

This is an oil painting on canvas and is monochromatic black. Reed's primary focus has been the rich vein of Northern European art from the mid-17th through 18th centuries, a period of enlightenment and profound interest in science, nature, and the animal world. Animals were assigned human traits (peacock:vanity; dog:fidelity), and nature itself was considered a symbol of God's providence - a commonly held belief within the stratified, gentry dominated social order of the time. Reed (b. 1958, New York, NY) lives and works in Boston, MA. She is a recipient of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Maud Morgan...

This is a framed painting. This painting is oil on paper, and is monochromatic black. Reed's primary focus has been the rich vein of Northern European art from the mid-17th through 18th centuries, a period of enlightenment and profound interest in science, nature, and the animal world. Animals were assigned human traits (peacock:vanity; dog:fidelity), and nature itself was considered a symbol of God's providence - a commonly held belief within the stratified, gentry dominated social order of the time. Reed (b. 1958, New York, NY) lives and works in Boston, MA. She is a recipient of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Maud Morgan...

Matt Flint is a painter from the mountain town of Lander, Wyoming. He grew up surrounded by woods, animals, and family. As a boy, He spent endless days creating art and exploring the fields and woods around him. Now he spends time with his family, painting, and exploring the rugged Wind River...

This is a framed painting. This painting is oil on paper, and is monochromatic black. Reed's primary focus has been the rich vein of Northern European art from the mid-17th through 18th centuries, a period of enlightenment and profound interest in science, nature, and the animal world. Animals were assigned human traits (peacock:vanity; dog:fidelity), and nature itself was considered a symbol of God...

This is an unframed original painting on paper. Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the myst...

Todd Horton lives and paints full time on Samish Island, Washington. His work involves landscape and wildlife with elements of chance that play between realism and abstraction. His work was recently featured in Seattles' Davidson Gallery "Exceptional" show and awarded a "Merit of Excellence" from a PONCHO Art Auction. Horton's paintings were also featured at the Museum of Northwest Art...

Todd Horton lives and paints full time on Samish Island, Washington. His work involves landscape and wildlife with elements of chance that play between realism and abstraction. His work was recently featured in Seattles' Davidson Gallery "Exceptional" show and awarded a "Merit of Excellence" from a PONCHO Art Auction. Horton's paintings were also featured at the Museum of Northwest Art...

Allison McIntyre (b. 1999 West Virginia) pulls from animal imagery and digital aesthetics to respond to contemporary human-animal relations, wrestling with issues such as the climate...

By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me to push the boundaries of what a past/present...

Allison McIntyre (b. 1999 West Virginia) pulls from animal imagery and digital aesthetics to respond to contemporary human-animal relations, wrestling...

Allison McIntyre (b. 1999 West Virginia) pulls from animal imagery and digital aesthetics to respond to contemporary human-animal relations, wrestling...

Allison McIntyre (b. 1999 West Virginia) pulls from animal imagery and digital aesthetics to respond to contemporary human-animal relations, wrestling...

This is a painting and collage on a panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me ...

This is a painting and collage on a panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me ...

This is a painting and collage on a panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me ...

This is a painting and collage on a circular panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice a...

This is a painting and collage on a circular panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice a...

This is a painting and collage on a circular panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice a...

This is a painting and collage on a circular panel. "By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice a...

Lisa Bostwick has had pieces exhibited at the Legion of Honor, Napa Valley Museum, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the de Young Museum. Her North Am...

Lisa Bostwick has had pieces exhibited at the Legion of Honor, Napa Valley Museum, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the de Young Museum. Her North Am...

Lisa Bostwick has had pieces exhibited at the Legion of Honor, Napa Valley Museum, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the de Young Museum. Her North Am...

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...

Artist Statement: My interest is in creating a permanent record of the impermanence of our world. In considering the exquisiteness of a moment shared, of a new connection, a new tho...

By placing figures into fantastical landscapes, I allow the viewer a glimpse into what might be reality, or not. This practice allows me to push the boundaries of what a past/present...

This is a unframed painting and is painted in the influence of the artist Duranti. This painting is oil on paper, and is monochromatic black. Reed's primary focus has been the rich vein of Northern European art from the mid-17th through 18th centuries, a period of enlightenment and profound interest in science, nature, and the animal world. Animals were assigned human traits (peacock:vanity; dog:fidelity), and nature itself was considered a symbol of God...

Allison McIntyre (b. 1999 West Virginia) pulls from animal imagery and digital aesthetics to respond to contemporary human-animal relations, wrestling with issues such as the climate...

This Reed piece is of a horse painted on 6 separate sheets of oil paper. It is painted in the influence of the European artist Stubbs. This painting is oil on paper, and is monochrom...

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...