Duke Beardsley, "What It Just Might Be: Clandestine Machinations From The Lost Trail To Nowhere" '22

DUKE BE ARD SLE Y

February 28 – March 12, 2022 Scottsdale Opening Reception | March 3 | 7:00–9:00pm

DUKE BE ARD SLE Y What It Just Might Be: Clandestine Machinations From The Lost Trail To Nowhere

Jackson Hole | Scottsdale | AltamiraArt.com

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Thunderbird Oil on canvas | 60 x 120 inches Enquire

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DUKE BEARDSLEY The more Duke Beardsley paints cowboys, the less he knows about them—the more their iconicity unravels, the less control he exerts.

Each new canvas finds the figures dismantling further. “I’m breaking the cowboy iconography that I have worked on for so long from any foundation it might have had,” he says.

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Amid this unbuilding, surprises percolate. “So many things are popping up as possible or even essential to the investigation.”

Ambiguity pervades this moment in his decades-deep process. As an influential artist recently advised him: Don’t put it on autopilot. Don’t revert to the tried and true.

Don’t paint to finish. Don’t get panicky.

Live in the uncertainty. Be OK with not knowing where you’re going. Trust that you’ll know once you get there.

Or as he counseled an emerging artist from Santa Fe who had set a target number of paintings to produce that year: “That’s a great goal but try to achieve it by the end of March,” Beardsley told him.

“The hope is that by painting so much, there will be one element of each painting that you like or learned from.”

Unbounded processing as process.

Paintings more about their making than their completion, more about creative curiosity, less about a resolute vision.

Incursions into seeming dichotomies like play and intention, spontaneity and gravitas. All expressed in the exhibition title, “What It Just Might Be: Clandestine Machinations From The Lost Trail To Nowhere.”

In such flux, silhouettes recede and reappear. Grids and edges dissolve.

Layers accumulate, sometimes revealing tantalizing texture. Values diverge and juxtapose. Key elements go missing.

Strings of riders, once considered subordinate to a hero, assert themselves with opacity and authority. They take on an agency all their own. “If there is a consciousness for me, Beardsley says, “it’s to authorize that agency.”

Questions abound: What is all this experimentation, accumulation, investigation doing? To the painting? To the viewer?

Beardsley evades answers: “For me, the best way forward is to stay unfamiliar and unconventional.”

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Branson Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Campo Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Los Tentacíones #1 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #2 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #3 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #4 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire

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Cañon Pintado Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Canyon of the Ancients Oil on canvas | 12 x 36 inches Enquire

Círculos Oil on canvas | 12 x 36 inches Enquire

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Chimey Rock Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Vaqueros Brillantes - Naranja Oil on canvas | 20 x 20 inches Enquire

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In Without Knocking Oil on canvas | 84 x 54 inches Enquire

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Las Nubes Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Los Tentacíones #5 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #6 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #7 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire Los Tentacíones #8 Mixed media on Masonite tile | 11 x 4.5 inches Enquire

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Mesa Verde Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Sweetwater Rim Oil and mixed media on canvas | 44 x 92 inches Enquire

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Swink Oil on canvas | 30 x 30 inches Enquire

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Icarus Oil on canvas | 12 x 36 inches Enquire North of the Canadian Rockies Oil on canvas | 12 x 36 inches Enquire

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Vaqueros Brillantes - Naranja Oil on canvas | 20 x 20 inches Enquire

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7038 E Main Street | Scottsdale AZ AltamiraArt.com | 480-949-1256

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