National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK
November 2-17
The 2024 Small Works, Great Wonders sale at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City will be held on November 8. This unique fusion of traditional and contemporary paintings and sculpture at affordable prices will be sold in a fixed-price draw following a cocktail reception.
Maia Chávez Larkin, Spring Bluster, oil and ink on canvas panel, 20 x 16.
Over 100 of the artists represented in the exhibition, including some from the prestigious museum’s Prix de West invitational, will be on hand. Buyers may leave with their purchases at the end of the night. The wide range of works will be on exhibit beginning November 2 with any unsold works remaining on display and available for purchase through the show close on November 17.
In a fresh take on the long tradition of strong drawing and vignettes in Western illustration, Maia Chávez Larkin’s SLIM and SPRING BLUSTER focus the viewer’s eye with frames within frames. They both set the mounted figures against abstractions that appear at first to be clouds but them become something more—ancient glyphs, perhaps, or the pictogram dreams of drifting ranch hands.
-
- Don Weller, Steeldust, watercolor, 13.5 x 17.5.
-
- Jie Wei Zhou, Harmonizing with Nature, oil on linen, 16 x 12.
-
- Dustin Payne, Tales of the Trail, bronze, 10.5 x 14 x 8.
Don Weller works in the vein of CAA watercolorists like James Boren and Donald Teague in a contemporary mode. One of his entries in Small Works, Great Wonders, STEELDUST, captures the essence of a roundup. A calf in the foreground almost seems to protrude from the picture plane. It turns as if to avoid us and the cowboy’s attempt to herd it. Fragments of the herd emerge from and recede into the dust, imparting a dreamlike atmosphere to the scene.
Hannah Harper, Lupine Landings, oil on cradled panel, 16 x 16.
The fox in Hannah Harper’s LUPINE LANDINGS seems to have stepped out of a Beatrix Potter tale or The Wind in the Willows. It’s a visual poem that wants someone to write a poem to accompany it.
To give you a sense of the variety of fine bronzes, consider Dustin Payne’s TALES OF THE TRAIL alongside Mick Doellinger’s EQUUS and Mark Danker’s OUTSIDER.
Payne’s yarn-spinning cowboy holds his saloon audience in rapt attention. The listeners at either end lean in while the woman clutches the tale-teller’s arm in a combination of pity and terror that would do justice to Shakespeare. The bartender’s skepticism, however, is evident. He’s heard variations on this theme time and again.
Mick Doellinger, Equus, bronze, 5.5 x 9 x 4.25.
By contrast, Doellinger’s EQUUS reveals the beauty of the skull, the armature, to use a sculptor’s word, of the animal that has defined the American West since the first horses were brought to this continent. Whether we imagine it under the skin of the stallion or bleached in the desert, Doellinger connects us to the essence of all horses in the Americas and beyond.
-
- Marlin Rotach, Ridin’ Point, watercolor, 20 x 16.
-
- Alice Leese, Sand Ranch, oil on panel, 11 x 14.
-
- Alice Leese, Fat Cow in Green Grass, oil on panel, 11 x 14.
-
- Morgane Antoine, Right of Way, acrylic, 24 x 12.
-
- Morgane Antoine, Soft Blues, acrylic, 12 x 12.
-
- Mark Danker, Outsider, metal, 13.5 x 19.5 x 5.5.
Lastly, Danker’s steampunk buffalo, OUTSIDER, is a found art masterpiece, simultaneously whimsical and profound. Animals are machines, after all—us too—and we often treat nature as a machine made for our use.
Small Works, Great Wonders offers something for every collector—little gems from top Western artists, new works from new talent and fresh takes on the genre. —James D. Balestrieri
contact information
swgw.nationalcowboymuseum.org
This story appeared in the October/November 2024 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.