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PrintThe Heart of Western Art
Capturing the West’s untouchable spirit.
The popularity of traditional Western art is obvious at Jackson Hole Art Auction, which features art from masters of the American West. The 2008 auction grossed $7.7 million in sales. This year’s event is set for September 19 at the Center for the Arts.
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You can have your Western art any way you like it in Jackson Hole.
Say, for example, you’re taken by the whole cowboy mystique and decide that West Lives On Gallery on North Glenwood sounds like the place to explore it.
You like contemporary work? Gallery owner Terry Ray can show you the brilliantly-colored dye-on-silk paintings of Montana-based artist Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey. Prefer realistic, representational work? You can almost smell sweat and straw when you look at Arizona-based Tom Dorr’s cowboy paintings. Or maybe sculpture is your thing. A bronze cowboy on horseback sculpted by D. Michael Thomas will twirl his lasso in your living room forever.
Artists, and people who buy art, love the images of the West. They love the American Indians, the mountain men, the mountainscapes, the big skies and the wildlife. And Jackson Hole, with its wooden sidewalks, elk antler arches on the town square and “Last of the Old West” motto, is not only the place to find prime Western scenery and history, but also the place to find Western art.
“The romance is still here,” Ray said. “And you can see more Western art in one day than you can see in a year in most places.”
Perhaps people become enamored of Western art because of the way it makes them feel. A mountain landscape on canvas stirs memories long hikes, scenic drives, backcountry skiing. A scene of two mountain men warming their hands by a fire or a portrait of an Indian brave scanning the horizon brings recollections of stories of days gone by a wild west of brave loners, heroic explorers and epic conflicts in wide open spaces.
“The whole westward expansion, with people going west and making a new beginning … that’s what it all represents: the strength of the people,” said R. Scott Nickell, a sculptor in Jackson Hole who specializes in bronze renditions of cowboys and American Indians in traditional, historically accurate garb.
Nickell’s sculptures are popular locally (former Vice President Dick Cheney owns one), but he also ships to faraway locales. And Galleries West Fine Art, where is he is both artist in residence and an owner, sees people from all over the world walk through its front door on South Glenwood. Germans in particular seem particularly enthused about traditional Western art, especially work that depicts the rich, varied cultures of American Indians.
