Show Preview | Kyle Polzin

Scottsdale, AZ
Legacy Gallery, November 15-24

Kyle Polzin, Quick Draw, oil, 15 x 21.

Kyle Polzin, Quick Draw, oil, 15 x 21.

This story was featured in the November 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

THE MANY ADMIRERS of Kyle Polzin’s remarkably realistic, richly atmospheric still lifes may have wondered what he’s been up to over the past year. After all, he didn’t make his usual, well-deserved appearances in top shows like Masters of the American West in February or the Prix de West Invitational in June. The answer may be found in his solo show of 18 works, entitled Grace and Grit, on view November 15-24 at Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale. Polzin and his family attend a reception on Saturday, November 16, from 5 to 7 p.m., at which he plans to offer a brief question-and-answer session “about how my paintings evolve,” he says.

Polzin’s painstaking process, in fact, is what explains his absence from those recent exhibitions. “I started painting for this show last November, and it’s more than I usually do in a year. So I decided not to put works in the Prix de West and Masters, to make sure I’d get enough for this one,” he explains.

The results of such dedication are more than worth the wait, with some of the 45-year-old artist’s most mature, powerful efforts yet. Take, for example, two pieces that he asked to have hung side by side to dramatize more fully the “colliding cultures” at the heart of 19th-century American history: MANIFEST DESTINY and DEFENDER OF THE TERRITORY. The spic-and-span American cavalry saddle in the former has its horn facing westward, underscoring the political belief at the time that it was the nation’s destiny to claim the entire continent. “Then you have the earthy Native American saddle, facing to the east almost as if it’s defending the West,” the artist says. Both canvases evidence Polzin’s meticulous attention to gritty detail and historical accuracy, usually rendered in dramatic chiaroscuro lighting.

As the first word of the show’s title—“grace”—suggests, Polzin has also been looking forward to sharing images that express “a little bit softer side” to his approach. TUESDAY DELIVERY, for example, is an unexpected floral still life from a man who admits that his subject matter is often summed up as “Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles.”

On a 30-by-40-inch canvas that allowed him to portray the blossoms at their actual size, he captures the kinds of flowers one might have found in an old-time florist’s shop, with peonies, hydrangeas, and two kinds of daisies in mismatched galvanized buckets on a rustic wooden workbench with a spool of twine. Like all of his paintings, says Polzin, “It’s not photorealism, but I try to make it feel as realistic as possible,” right down to the “dust in the air and a little bit of haze, like a window to the past.”

Still another piece that represents a departure, QUICK DRAW features a holstered, pearl-handled revolver, bullets, and a medicine bottle; a sketch nailed to the wall shows the cowboy who owns them practicing the title’s technique. “The sketch is based on some photos I took of myself doing those poses,” Polzin reveals. “So this really is the first self-portrait I have ever done.” —Norman Kolpas

contact information
480.945.1113
www.legacygallery.com

This story was featured in the November 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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