Principal Juror - Beth Venn, Independent Curator, New York, NY

Juror's Comments - The process of jurying an invitational survey of any sort is always an exercise in focus and memory. As a way to bring clarity to the process, one naturally seeks commonality among disparate works, a thread of cohesion that might suggest an organizing theme. However, seeking out an organizing principal is not only counterproductive but nearly impossible when the task at hand requires an examination of the unique qualities of each entry. Each slide reveals a world of artistic thought, composition, intention, and even beauty. A juror must always work simultaneously in the realm between micro and macro, looking for each work’s integrity while also seeking some larger synergy.

I’ve seen enough art throughout the country to know that regional styles are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Artists migrate (as do art teachers) and the resulting cross-fertilization of styles and techniques all but diminishes any true regional tendencies. When approached to jury a selection of paintings from the western states, I knew there would be no cowboys and Indians, or deftly painted fields of wild horses. But perhaps my nostalgia for the West, brought about by the family vacations of my childhood, left me longing not for stereotypical western subjects but rather a desire by artists to communicate the less tangible qualities of the region––expansive space, the characteristic western topography, the unique properties of light, as well as the ways in which the West is no longer living up to our utopian vision.

Rick Dula’s Lusk Silos follows the grand tradition of heroic American realism. The sheds and silos are tall and stately, dominating the sky in a display of might and persistence. It is a beautiful image, ever-present, yet nostalgic for a time when agriculture and farming played a prominent role not only in this country’s economy, but in popular imagination. In sharp contrast, Dula’s other images (not shown here), suggest the power of American industry gone bad, where neglected mills become symbols of obsolescence and the changing American landscape. In Island Arrows, Dula moves away from the grand American scene to explore a certain quality of light and shadow, though not of an entirely natural kind. Light creates the shadows cast from the lampposts, which then intersect the manmade structures in the street. It is a tiny microcosm, a perfectly rendered fragment that captures a certain quality of the new western landscape––of light, of endless pavement,
of the shadows of signs.

Janaki Lennie has looked at the western sky, seeking out those brief transitional moments just before sunrise and just after sunset, when the quality of light and the rich hues of the sky are at their most magical. But instead of rendering a sentimental sunset, Lennie renders exactly what she sees. At the very periphery of her paintings streetlights can be detected casting an eerie glow. Soon other intruders are revealed. Strip malls glow in the distance. Exit signs, highway infrastructure, electrical poles all seem to compete for a place in this otherwise pristine view. It’s as if the artist tried desperately to see the sky but was thwarted by the ever-encroaching man-made world.

Bob Koons circumvents the age old conventions of landscape painting in his series of “Fakes.” Rendering otherwise classical landscapes (some compositions are borrowed from landscape greats like Casper David Friedrich and John Constable) in brightly colored camouflage, Koons plays with our understanding that camouflage allows one to blend in with nature, turning that theory around to show how “fake” camouflage really is when translated back to nature. Paintings such as How to Fake a Landscape or Constable...Fake! seem to also make sly references to childhood paint-by-number kits, Rorschach tests, or puzzles.

Jason Manley turns his back on the all encompassing landscape scene in favor of a more microscopic view. In Flesh, Manley takes a traditional image of a tree’s growth rings, superimposes a grid, then changes the orientation of each square within the grid so that the original pattern of the concentric rings are no longer evident. The resulting puzzle-like composition reminds us of the simple beauty that is found in the unique organic patterns created by nature.

Each of these artists, and many others in this issue of New American Paintings, find their place in the long lineage of so called “western art,” not by clinging to worn out traditions or clichés, but by bringing a unique perspective to bear on an area of the country that has always borne the weight of our collective dreams, nostalgia, and imagination, and will continue to do so.