News from the art world
Long Shadows by George Carlson.
It’s been an exciting few months at western art events! The Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West celebrated its 25th anniversary with a strong show in late February in Los Angeles. When the awards were announced, renowned painter George Carlson continued his winning streak: His painting LONG SHADOWS won both Best of Show and the Thomas Moran Memorial Award for Painting. Carlson said of the piece, “As I stood on the talus, the challenge was to take a complex scene of diagonals of the eroded landscape and try to put order into the painting. I realized the long shadows were every bit as important as the land itself.”
A number of other awards were bestowed upon participating Masters artists. Dean Mitchell won the Trustees’ Purchase Award, Walter Matia won the Norris Foundation Award for Sculpture, and Dustin Van Wechel won the Bob Kuhn Wildlife Award (read more about Van Wechel and his winning painting on page 52). Bill Anton was recognized with the Gene Autry Memorial Award for outstanding body of work; John Moyers took home the Gayle Roski Stories of the West Award for narrative artwork; and Len Chmiel was given the John J. Geraghty Award for his advancement of contemporary western art. Terri Kelly Moyers won both the Artists’ Choice and Patrons’ Choice awards.
At the Night of Artists show and sale, held in March at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, painter Don Oelze had a very successful showing: The Montana artist’s piece SCOUTS AT THE OLD MISSION took the Sam Houston Award for Painting and the William B. Travis Award for Patrons’ Choice. Stefan Savides won the James Bowie Award for Sculpture, Kim Wiggins won the Briscoe Museum Purchase Award, and David LaMure Jr. won the David Crockett Award for Artists’ Choice.
Finally, at the Scottsdale Art Auction in April, an amazing 99 percent of all lots sold for a total of almost $15 million. Among the deceased artists with impressive sales results were Frank Tenney Johnson, G. Harvey, and Joseph H. Sharp. And there were some jaw-dropping results among living artists: A painting by Jeremy Lipking set a new auction record of $93,600; a piece by Logan Maxwell Hagege sold for $187,200 against a low estimate of $60,000; and one of Kyle Polzin’s works hammered for an astounding $257,400 against a low estimate of $45,000. The biggest sale of the day, though, was a monumental painting by Howard Terpning from 2006 that sold for just over $1.5 million.
This Editor’s Letter appeared in the June/July 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.