Opening Friday, July 17th
For this exhibition, we combined two women constantly inspired by the stories of the West. Taylor Crisp's newest body of work infuses history and narrative into canvases ripe with powerful imagery and use of color. Her paintings reinforce the grand scale of western landscapes, and how humans fit among them. Peggy Judy's work has a more subtle palette, reminiscent of a day spent kicking up dust in the desert - just as many of her characters are. Together, these artists present classic western themes in contemporary styles, bringing together past and present.
Enjoy reading through each artist's inspiration behind their paintings.
Taylor Crisp
Taylor Crisp Spring Thaw 24 x 48 oil $8,200
From desert salt flats to alpine meadows, I’ve been privileged to experience many facets of the West. The most fleeting moments are often the most impactful. Lightning on the face of a 14er. A flock of migrating seabirds in a field of sagebrush. A dusting of snow in the desert. Gone in a moment, remembered forever.
I have spent the last 7 years or so volunteering as a fire lookout with the Angeles National Forest, drawn to the supreme sense of isolation and opportunity for public service. Spotting fires, a job held by women since the very earliest days of the fire lookout service, feels like both an affirmation of my connection to mankind, while also acting as a perfect excuse to escape every human being within a 50 mile radius. From my vantage point on Slide Mountain on a clear day, if I turn to the South I can see the teeming megalopolis of Los Angeles and all her nearly 4 million citizens. If I turn North, nothing but mountains for miles, and the clouds that rise to meet them.
On a recent trip up Highway 395, I passed an imposing range known as the White Mountains, on the border of Nevada and California. The setting sun illuminated the mountainsides but the ranchlands below were left in shadow, the sun blocked by the massive Eastern Sierras on the other side of the glacial valley. This lighting dynamic felt apt, as I passed multiple banners and homemade signs pleading for information on a missing person's case in the area. It made me wonder what could be hiding up in the cloud-covered mountains, or concealed down darkened ranch roads, fenced and isolated from the outside world. This isn't a piece to commemorate this specific case, but is instead meant to speak to the ubiquity of such cases in the West and Alaska. Those who are still missing, and those for whom the search never even began.
For a child growing up in Craig Colorado, the Basque sheepherder wagons that dotted the landscape felt like visions from a fairytale. Driven by season, weather, and the ever present demands of the sheep themselves, they were never in the same spot, appearing instead like hobbit homes sprung from the ground just before you entered the next aspen grove, or crested a hill of sage. My memories of these wagons never include a sheepherder, only ever a wagon and perhaps a hobbled horse - the sheepherder having just trudged out of sight in pursuit of yet another wayward ewe.
Nestled in a lonely strip of arid land in the rain shadow of Los Padres National Forest, the Carrizo Plain feels to me like a place out of space and time, a sort of after-image to the bustling agricultural powerhouse of the Central Valley nearby. It presents its story in layers, laid bare to the sun over decades of wind and drought. Down one road, a painted rock with signs of human habitation predating the arrival of European settlers. Down the next road, an abandoned farmhouse and stable, 1970’s burnt orange carpet rotting inside and cribbing marks still visible from horses born when my grandparents were still children. For all these remnants of foundered dreams and forced migration, what persists is a haunting but beautiful expression of the California of ages past. Carpets of native grasses and wildflowers, tilting gently in the wind. And above all, silence.
Against my better judgment, I have always been drawn to exploring the mining ruins of the West. There’s something vaguely romantic, though admittedly dark, about the trials of man against nature. The hulking behemoths of industry and engineering reduced to rotting timber. Strips of once-cherished wallpaper - ordered by catalogue and shipped by boat, locomotive, and mule train - now exposed and fluttering in an alpine breeze. The obscene effort and optimism, set against the knowledge that the vast majority of those responsible for heaving these fortunes from the earth never shared in the spoils. Exploring a copper mine near Grand Junction, as my light flashed over yet another passage leading into the darkness, I thought of the unsung toilers of these mines. The little beast of burden, blind to the world after months underground, who emerges from the earth at the end of his shift. Face turning to greet the unseen sun.
Peggy Judy
"Sixteen Hands Closer to Heaven", "Riding on Gold", and “Periwinkle" are all of women. Women play a large roll not only in today's “West” but yesterday's as well. Often overlooked but a very vital part of the landscape. I enjoy bringing their stories to life.