Duke Beardsley Pedazos del Oeste, 2019

DUKE BE ARD SLE Y

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February 11 – 23, 2019 Scottsdale Meet the Artist | February 14 | 7:00–9:00pm

DUKE BE ARD SLE Y Pedazos del Oeste

Jackson Hole | Scottsdale | AltamiraArt.com

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Regalo Rosa Oil on canvas | 36 x 36 inches Enquire

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Pedazos del Oeste Duke Beardsley’s cowboys are on the move, galloping past static mythologies toward futures both vivid and unresolved. Traditionally in Western art, place provides cues to character. This is not so in the mindset of Beardsley, who brings to bear his lived experience as a fifth-generation Coloradoan. Within his rubric of color and repetition, his heroes ride into a rhetorical realm, unfettered by landscape, isolated in modern life. The contextual weight the cowboy carries as an icon is revived by the bold and modern style of Beardsley. As the Old West transitions to a new era, bringing population growth and changing ideas, the artist grapples with balancing this change symbolically via his work.

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Beardsley challenges viewers to find their own answers through the act of looking—to wonder what they are seeing or not seeing— in his works and in the world. Exploring iterations, he paints each silhouette by hand, allowing their personalities to come through in subtle variations: a torso slightly torqued; a hat a bit askance; heels in mid-kick; hooves aloft in flight.

Happenstance lent transparency to his riders, underscoring their precarity. Chance led Beardsley to a historical context outside Western tropes. The 19th century study photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, has served as an inspiration to Beardsley for his famous work, “The Horse in Motion.”

Unconsciously, he had been exploring his riders within the grid form of photographic negatives. “I suddenly realized there was something there that I wasn’t intending,” he says, “but that’s one of the benefits of keeping your eyes and your heart open.”

Chance is a major characteristic in Beardsley’s works, but there is a great deal of intention as well. While contemplating the era and subject of his paintings, the artist asks, “What does the icon mean out here on its own? Does it still carry the traditional weight and provenance? Rugged individualism, heroic, tough? And what happens when you impose a decidedly and unapologetically romanticized icon in front

of an equally stylized and romanticized invented background of a hundred floating cowboys?” By immortalizing a legacy, Beardsley captures the subtleties of a way of life that is rapidly changing and possibly fading.

Growing up in Colorado, Duke Beardsley was always trying to find his way as an artist amid the leaden legacy of cowboy art. “Western art can take all kinds of abuse and it won’t break. Artists are out there right now figuring out a way to push and stretch the genre. I think about myself, I still have the scar marks from Remington and Russell, but their West is not my West.” Shaped and molded by this way of life, the artist has a respect and fondness of traditional Western art, although the traditional way is not authentic to him.

Beardsley works big, as big as the land and lore he ruminates on through absence and inference. Courageously, he confronts wall-sized canvases. “I’ve never been what you might call dainty, so I love moving and getting up on chairs or ladders to paint,” he says. “I’m not a delicate painter. I find freedom and power in that, and the energy is pretty incredible.” Life on the ranch reflects his creative process of painting, respecting the way of life but paving your own path through it. Beardsley’s beliefs are realized through his work, to be traditional yet contemporary.

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La Fugitiva Oil on canvas | 72 x 60 inches Enquire

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Fantasmas Graficos – Blanco Linoleum mono block print on paper | 24 x 18 inches Enquire

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Cayendo a Pedazos Oil on wood panels | 40 x 80 inches Enquire

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Regalo Azul Oil on canvas | 36 x 36 inches Regalo Verde Oil on canvas | 36 x 36 inches Enquire

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Fantasmas Graficos – Gris Linoleum mono block print on paper | 24 x 18 inches Enquire

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Cinta de Plata Oil on canvas | 32 x 86.5 inches Enquire

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San Valentin Oil on Masonite tiles | 15 x 15 inches Enquire

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Los Azules Oil on canvas | 24 x 24 inches Los Solitarios Oil on canvas | 24 x 24 inches Enquire

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Pedazos Peligros Oil on Masonite tiles | 15 x 9 inches Enquire

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7038 E Main Street | Scottsdale, Arizona 85251 AltamiraArt.com | 480-949-1256

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