Show Preview | Kathy Anderson & Mark Boedges

Bozeman, MT
Legacy Gallery, August 11-20

Mark Boedges, Old Hollow, oil, 20 x 30.

This story was featured in the August 2017 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2017 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Several years ago, Legacy Gallery general manager Scott Jones traveled to Vermont to observe the Putney Painters—the group made famous by the venerable alla prima master Richard Schmid. Jones was so impressed that he later invited the group to do an exhibition at Legacy’s Scottsdale gallery. “Kathy Anderson’s work sold so well,” Jones says of the Connecticut painter, “and it showed that the gallery could sell still lifes.” Mark Boedges came to the gallery’s attention when he won Best of Show in its third annual Salon show. “When I saw his work for the first time,” Jones says, “I immediately asked for pieces for our holiday show. Then he won the grand prize for that show. It’s been a great relationship ever since.” This month, Jones is excited to present works by Anderson and Boedges at Legacy’s Bozeman, MT, location. The show opens with an artists’ reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, August 11. A painting demo is on Thursday, August 10, from 6 to 8 p.m.

: Kathy Anderson, Hollyhocks and New Dawn Roses, oil, 30 x 20.

: Kathy Anderson, Red Spring With Ruby and Tulips, oil, 16 x 15.

: Mark Boedges, Bristol Farm, oil, 10 x 20.

Anderson brings up to 13 paintings featuring her soft, luminous florals—yellow hollyhocks, a vase of cut red tulips, white lilies—as well as a couple of western landscapes with wildlife. Flowers, gardening, and painting have been lifelong passions for the artist. “My mother was an avid gardener, and for a million years I have painted the birds and flowers,” she says. In the midst of painting these pieces, Anderson attended a workshop with Jill Carver. “She told me to think of the one thing that was exciting me most about what I was going to paint,” Anderson says. Everything else, Carver advised, should be left for other paintings. “She changed my life by saying that,” Anderson says. “I’m keeping that one exciting element in the forefront of my mind and letting the rest of the painting have less emphasis.”

: Kathy Anderson, One Red Rose, oil, 16 x 24.

: Kathy Anderson, Watching Baby, oil, 20 x 12.

: Mark Boedges, Building Up, oil, 20 x 30.

Boedges presents 10 landscapes, which, with one exception, depict the woodlands and farms around his northern Vermont home. Almost everything Boedges paints he completes or at least begins en plein air. In this show there is, again, one exception: OLD HOLLOW. “It’s a place not far from here. I’ve passed it for years, saying, ‘I’ve got to paint this!’ Last month, I painted it.” In a slightly flattened rendering of the nearby home, the front yard is strewn with the detritus of life in colors that pop against the more muted buildings. “I’ve been working up to this painting,” Boedges says. Long a painter of old farms with ramshackle outbuildings, rusting trucks, and other evidence of “wrestling something from the land,” Boedges says these farm “portraits” marry his two loves: landscape and narrative. While working on OLD HOLLOW, a scene he found striking on a purely visual level, Boedges became aware of the individual items in the yard that, together, told a larger story—power tools, construction materials, a pile of tires, and, tucked between a table and a pickup truck, a kettle grill. “That object really spoke to me,” he says, and the more he looked and thought about it, he realized, “these people are not entirely dissimilar to me.”

Jones’ enthusiasm about the show is infectious. “I wanted to challenge what we’re doing in Bozeman by bringing in subject matter that was different from traditional western art,” he says. “Both of these artists fit that scenario.” —Laura Rintala

contact information
406.577.2810
www.legacygallery.com