Radiant work
8B - Jackson Hole News&Guide, Wednesday, September 5, 2012
West Lives On 75 N. Glenwood St. 734-2888 WestLivesOn.com ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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By Dina Mishev
eptember brings a flood of new work to West Lives On, which enables the gallery to host a Fall Arts Festival open house featuring almost all of its 50 artists. “Our artists load us up with new works this time of year,” said Terry Ray, owner and founder of West Lives On and West Lives On Contemporary and former chairman of the Fall Arts Festival. “We really have no choice but to have a gallerywide open house.” Many of the gallery’s artists will be at West Lives On on Sunday, Sept. 16, for the Farewell to Fall brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. “I’m expecting about 20 of them,” Ray said. The open house will include new works by West Lives On perennial favorites like Ray McCarty, Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey and Joe Velazquez, and also work by new artists like Val Warner and Kelly Dangerfield. Warner finds inspiration in the natural world surrounding her northern California home, nestled between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. “Living creatures are so full of bounced light,” she said. “It is a never-ending challenge to put that in my paintings.” Warner paints in oils because “they lend themselves to the luminosity and depth I need to show in my work.” Instead of striving for photorealism, Warner tries to “show my subjects in a way that causes the viewer to stop and take notice.” She succeeds. “I’ve been told that my work has a certain radiance that transcends the canvas,” Warner said. Radiance also defines Kelly Dan-gerfield’s paintings of wildlife and landscapes. “I’ll paint almost anything you can find in nature,” he said, “but primarily I like wildlife and landscapes.” Growing up in Utah, Dangerfield spent much of his youth exploring the area’s wildest places. He now lives with his family in Bozeman, Mont., and spends much of his time exploring the mountains, trails and rivers of Yellowstone, Glacier, and Grand Teton national parks, searching for ideas
West Lives On artists contribute new work, such as “Cloud Makers,” an oil by Reid Christie.
for paintings. “Both Val and Kelly have caught on quickly with collectors,” Ray said. “Kelly brings such a nice, soft touch to his wildlife, and Val’s work reminds me so much of Vivi Crandall’s. Vivi died years ago but was our No. 1 artist before her death.” One of West Lives On’s top artists today (and for many years) is Ray McCarty. Inspired by his family’s outlaw ancestry — the McCarty Gang ran with the likes of Butch Cassidy — his earliest paintings and sketches were of the American West. McCarty is now known for his paintings of women in Victorian settings. Obviously influenced by the likes of Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, McCarty uses line and color dramatically to capture a vari-
ety of emotions in his portraits: proud and haughty, sensual and sexually confident, shy and humble, reflective and contemplative. A former Fall Arts Festival poster artist, Joe Velazquez reflects on the fur-trade era encompassing the mountain men, voyageurs and northern American Indian cultures. He meticulously renders with historical accuracy every detail in his paintings, from weapons to beadwork, spending hours on research before setting brush to canvas. Inspired by masters like Harvey Dunn, Frederic Remington, and C.M. Russell, Velazquez wants each piece to not only tell a story, but to “serve as a reminder of the fragility of the world and its people we treasure,” he wrote in his artist statement. “When a painting is complete, [I] judge its success by the emotion it evokes from the viewer.”
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