Nathan Solano, Sunset on a Field of Dreams, acrylic, 19 x 36.
Though better known for traditional western subjects like Native Americans and working cowboys, Nathan Solano also captures a powerful sense of the region’s wistful side in landscapes such as SUNSET ON A FIELD OF DREAMS. He based the acrylic-on-canvas painting on a photo he took 25 years ago of an abandoned tractor in the snow on farmland east of Pueblo, CO, where he lives and works. Recently, Solano came across the image in his files and decided to paint it for last September’s Quest for the West at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, IN. An eager collector snatched it up.
The finished work looks little like the original photo, which Solano took on a hazy winter afternoon. Layer after layer, he evolved the scene. A large, leafless tree that dominated the rough-in’s right foreground gradually moved farther back, eventually disappearing. “I kept struggling with it, so I just ‘chopped’ it down,” he laughs. The sky darkened, and a setting sun appeared beyond the tree line. Eventually, beside the barn at the field’s far edge, he added a small house with light glowing in a window. “With each iteration, I refined it more and more,” he says.
After serving as an infantryman in Vietnam, Solano began training his discerning eye as a news photographer before moving on to illustration work. He started painting in the mid-1980s and found his first representation in 1990. Though now in some of the West’s top galleries and museum shows, he remains refreshingly self-deprecating, even dismissing his own artistic aspirations, saying, “Sometimes my ego writes checks that my talent can’t cover.” The quality of his work, however, remains something art lovers continue to bank on.
Find Solano’s work at Ann Korologos Gallery, Basalt, CO; Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, CO; and www.nathansolano.com.
This story appeared in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine.