Show Preview | Francis Livingston

Santa Fe, NM
Meyer Gallery, August 14-20

Francis Livingston, Snow Light, oil, 15 x 15.

This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

SHAPE, COLOR, balance, texture: Take a visual tour through the expansive oeuvre of Idaho artist Francis Livingston and you’ll notice the lavish attention he pays to each of these design principles. This month art enthusiasts can enjoy a showcase of more than 20 of Livingston’s canvases in person when Meyer Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, unveils an all-new collection of his southwestern-inspired oil paintings. A few abstracted pieces and depictions of urban architecture also pepper the show, to harmonizing effect, says associate director Jordan West. “Francis’ techniques and his color palette—it all translates, so it doesn’t look like these contemporary pieces are by a totally foreign painter,” he notes.

Western art collectors are probably most familiar with Livingston’s painterly images depicting Native American figures, chamisa-dotted landscapes, and riders on horseback navigating aspen woodlands. His portrayals of the Southwest have elicited comparisons to the works of Taos Society artists like Ernest Blumenschein and Victor Higgins, painters he has long admired but never imagined, early on, that he’d emulate one day. In his youth, Livingston set his sights on becoming a comic-book artist. He vividly recalls, however, a boyhood visit in the 1960s to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame (now called the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum) in Oklahoma, where he grew up. There, the works of western masters like Frederic Remington, Nicolai Fechin, and Maynard Dixon made an unforgettable impression on him. “Even though I didn’t have the idea that I wanted to do western art,” says Livingston, “the germ was planted in my brain.”

Years later, while navigating a flourishing career in California as an award-winning illustrator, Livingston’s painting career also started to take off. By the time he relocated with his family to Idaho in the mid-1990s, his oeuvre of oils included numerous urban landscapes and atmospheric portrayals of the Santa Cruz boardwalk. But it was a series of illustrative paintings Livingston created for Smithsonian magazine, featuring the historic Bozeman Trail, that caught the eye of gallery owner Mark Sublette. Sublette expressed interest in seeing more western paintings by Livingston, prompting the artist to explore the genre more deeply. “I wasn’t interested in cowboy art, but I was interested in the Taos Society founders,” says Livingston, noting the kinship he felt toward these artists, many of whom also had found success as illustrators first. “The other thing I could relate to was that the Taos artists were constantly moving with the times,” he says. “Their work adapted and changed as the years went by, and that’s what my work was doing.”

Indeed, Livingston’s show reveals an eclectic group of artistic influences that have shaped his work over time. In addition to the Taos artists, for example, hints of John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and the California Impressionists emerge in his landscapes and figurative works; in his contemporary pieces, elements of Richard Diebenkorn pop up. And with each new painting he creates, Livingston remains open to new possibilities and discoveries in his approach—experiences he unwittingly may be passing on to viewers. “The best thing collectors can say to me is, ‘I walk by your painting every day and see something new in it,’” he says. —Kim Agricola

contact information
505.983.1434
www.meyergalleries.com

This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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