Finding new views of the iconic American West

Today artists are offering a vision of the West as a place with modern concerns and contemporary vistas. 'I wasn’t about to paint another proud Indian princess,” artist Jo LeMay Rutledge says. “I go out there and that’s not what I see. I see cowboys on cellphones.'

|
Courtesy of Dean Mitchell
"Dry Rot"

When Florida-based painter Dean Mitchell visits the West, he doesn’t focus on the grand, romantic views that have been captured by the brushes of so many others. Mr. Mitchell’s watercolors and oils are of ramshackle reservation sites in Arizona that remind him of his impoverished childhood in the South, and that spark conversations about how history and inequality shape today’s America.

“I just want the work to ring true,” says Mitchell, who is among the artists offering a vision of the West as a place with modern concerns and contemporary vistas.

He has a show of reservation scenes opening in March at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kan. Last year, the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody, Wyo., added a Mitchell painting to its collection. Curator Emily Wilson says Mitchell’s perspective is unique. “It’s good that artists want to show more of the West,” she adds.

A newcomer working in this vein is Jo LeMay Rutledge, a Texan who did not at first think she could contribute to a crowded genre.

“I wasn’t about to paint another proud Indian princess,” she says. “I go out there and that’s not what I see. I see cowboys on cellphones.”

Ms. Rutledge says she paints the West today, just as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell painted the West of their time. Their 19th-century vision still wields powerful influence over how the West is imagined.

Colorado artist William Matthews has, he says, developed an audience that likes “seeing something unusual and not predictable.” His light-filled watercolors have cows and horses, but also trucks and gas canisters. In one portrait, a cowboy friend, who was trying to kick the habit, sucks on a lollipop instead of a cigarette.

“The West is still a subject that’s fruitful for artists to explore,” says Thomas Brent Smith, who recently put together a Matthews show for the Denver Art Museum.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Finding new views of the iconic American West
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2015/0217/Finding-new-views-of-the-iconic-American-West
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe