Show Preview | Oils & Acrylics - Southwest Art Magazine

Tuscon, AZ
Wilde Meyer Gallery, January 8-February 1

Robert Burt, Adobe With Red Doors, acrylic, 18 x 36.

This story was featured in the January 2017 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art January 2017 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Artists often experiment with different mediums in their pursuit of unique creation and artistic fulfillment. Some of those mediums offer opportunities to push their techniques and find new subjects. This is the basis for a new exhibition at Wilde Meyer Gallery. Curators have gathered works from 12 of the gallery’s best painters to celebrate their techniques and mediums in a group show titled Oils & Acrylics.

The show opens Sunday, January 8, with a reception from 1 to 4 p.m., where visitors can view all-new works and talk with some of the local artists included in the show. Paintings include landscape, western, and southwestern imagery and a wide range of techniques and styles. Betty Wilde, owner of the gallery, says some artists, like Kristin Knight, work in watercolor-style washes and then finish with a beautiful glaze. Other artists, like Greg Van Dye, use thick impasto techniques.

: Sherri Belassen, Cactus Scape, oil, 36 x 96.

: Greg Dye, Flying in a Blue Dream, oil, 48 x 60.

: Judy Choate, Monsoon Building, acrylic, 40 x 30.

: Timothy Chapman, The Effects of Diet on Pattern, acrylic, 48 x 36.

: Robert Charon, Surfacing Koi, acrylic, 48 x 48.

Dye’s impressionistic, vibrantly colored paintings of landscapes and animals represent the fulfillment of a long-held dream for the artist. He says when he began schooling to become a graphic designer, he told his mother, “I’m going to paint like van Gogh, just wait and see.” After retiring from a career as an illustrator, Dye put his childhood interest in oil painting to work.

“As an illustrator, I used to be so precise and exact,” Dye says. “When I picked up the palette knife, that’s when everything changed, and it became so liberating. It’s a spiritual and emotional experience because I pour so much energy into all of the works.”

Other featured artists include Ka Fisher, Acacia Alder, Timothy Chapman, and many other talented painters. Wilde says the gallery chose the mediums because “they represent most of the paintings we handle and the mediums we are interested in.” Putting the two mediums together allows attendees to view the subjects and mediums in new and different ways.

Dye says that seeing the different mediums and how artists utilize them shows the unique personalities of the artists. “Everybody expresses themselves differently, and the technique you choose is a very personal choice,” the artist says. —Mackenzie McCreary

contact information
520.615.5222
www.wildemeyer.com