There is a lot of superb art being made these days. This column shines light on a trio of gifted individuals, all of whom will — by coincidence — participate in Plein Air for the Park (July 13–17), a prestigious competition organized by Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
KATHRYN MAPES TURNER (b. 1971), Grace, 2015, 40 x 30, oil on linen, on view at Trio Fine Art, Jackson Hole (August 17–September 3)
KATHRYN MAPES TURNER (b. 1971) creates “paintings that capture my subjects’ essential spirit and energy, and that tap into the inherent nature of our emotions. I don’t want to re-create photo-realistic representations.” With paintings like Grace, illustrated here, she is clearly achieving these goals. Turner is part of the fourth generation raised on the Triangle X Ranch in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. She grew up on horseback, discovering the charms and challenges of nature, but she also relished her school’s weekly art class; as a teenager, she painted alongside such local talents as Conrad Schwiering, as well as visiting ones like Ned Jacob, Skip Whitcomb, and T. Allen Lawson. This passion led to her to major in studio arts at the University of Notre Dame, the curriculum of which encompassed a semester in Rome, a mecca for artists if ever there was one. Turner went on to study at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., earned an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, and worked as a classroom art teacher and at the Smithsonian Institution. She returned home in 2000, landing first at Jackson’s National Museum of Wildlife Art and then shifting to art full-time. “The valley of Jackson Hole evokes expression,” Turner declares. Her native region is renowned for its scenic beauty and dramatic light, yet she is also fascinated by the “innate connection among the physical and spiritual elements shared by this landscape and its inhabitants.” The latter include animals both wild and domesticated, and indeed Turner has won particular applause for her sensitive portrayals of horses. Hardly a homebody, she travels widely to such favorite locales as Italy and coastal California, and explored the Grand Canyon this spring. Today Turner works in watercolors and oils, drawing and painting outdoors and in the studio. Her images range in appearance from meticulous to ethereal, though a luminous softness now predominates. The key to continued growth, Turner believes, is experimentation: though she consults all phases of art history, she has lately been studying such abstract expressionists as Willem de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler, focusing on their “unorthodox paint applications.” Though still representational, recent works like Grace feel more abstract and emotive, so it will be fascinating to see how this evolution unfolds. Turner gets direct feedback about such shifts from her collectors at Trio Fine Art, the Jackson gallery she has co-owned and operated
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with fellow artists Jennifer L. Hoffman and Bill Sawczuk since 2005. She is represented not only by Trio (where her solo show, Light on the Land, runs August 17–September 3), but also by Authentique Gallery of Art and Design (St. George, UT), Chamblin Jones (Lexington, KY), and Long View Gallery (Washington, DC). Coming up soon are a solo show at Jackson’s Center for the Arts (August 24–September 20), a donation to the Western Visions Show and Sale benefitting the National Museum of Wildlife Art (September 15–16), and a major painting offered in the Jackson Hole Art Auction (September 16–17).
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JIM WODARK (b. 1958) paints the mountains, deserts, and coasts of the American West, with and without figures or architecture. Occasionally he turns his attention to scenic areas of Europe, to still life, to figures in their own right, and to the odd pickup truck or sailing vessel. Wodark (pronounced “wood-ark”) was born and raised in rural Colorado, where, he explains, “It’s hard not to love the outdoors.” Fortunately his parents were artistic, though they had to draw the line on his creativity when he filled his second-grade teacher’s shoes with paint. Young Wodark went on to major in marketing at the University of Northern Colorado, though he was careful to take an art class each semester to sustain his long-standing creative urges. After several years of “real” jobs, he spent 15 years running
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his own cartoon business, then relocated in 1990 to Southern California, where he has lived ever since. It was there in 1997 that Wodark discovered plein air painting. Not surprisingly, he has long drawn inspiration from such early California Impressionists as Edgar Payne and William Ritschel, and also from more contemporary masters like Clyde Aspevig, the late Ken Auster, Glenn Dean, T. Allen Lawson, and Richard Schmid. Today, Wodark explains, “I want to translate the beauty around me — a fleeting moment — into something permanent and timeless that brings those same feelings to life for each viewer.” To accomplish this, he starts every painting with a thumbnail sketch, then a value study, always experimenting along the way to best “capture the light, mood, and
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JIM WODARK (b. 1958), Night Watch, 2016, oil on linen, 20 x 24 in., available from the artist
atmosphere” of the scene. Wodark has fully mastered the contrasts between dark and light, warm and cool, and hard and soft edges — all of which help lead the viewer’s eye around his composition. Illustrated here is Night Watch, a fine example of his gifts; nocturnes are notoriously difficult to paint, but somehow Wodark makes them look easy. Wodark is represented by Chemers Gallery (Tustin, CA) and Oh-Be-Joyful Gallery (Crested Butte and Telluride, CO). His next solo show will appear at the latter gallery’s Crested Butte space July 20–31.
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STACEY PETERSON (b. 1978) lives just west of Denver, an ideal base from which to create luminous landscape paintings of the Rocky Mountain region, though she occasionally depicts buildings or flowers, too. Born in Utah and raised south of Denver, young Peterson enjoyed hiking, camping, and backpacking with her friends, and also harbored a love of art because her mother worked in a gallery. The youngster benefitted from good art instruction in grade school, but when college approached, she opted to pursue a B.S. at the Colorado School of Mines and later a job in environmental engineering with ExxonMobil in Houston. Peterson began using oils to make portraits and figures on the weekends, and soon returned to Colorado, where she juggled a career designing air-pollution control systems while studying at the Art Students League of Denver and Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She took her first plein air workshop with the landscapist Jay Moore, and also studied with Dan Young and John David Phillips. In 2006, Peterson shifted
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to art full-time and has not looked back; she Park at the peak of fall color, and had spent an notes that her engineer’s knack for solving entire day taking in the wide open views. At problems through trial and error has directly the end of the day, exhausted, I happened to pass this spot and I slammed on the brakes – I benefited her artistry. Today, Peterson hikes, mountain bikes, just knew I had to paint it. The valley was still and camps on her own or with her family. a little bit hazy from all of the wildfires, and Always at hand to record nature’s beauty are the sunlight was streaming sideways through her camera and painting materials. Back in the haze and hitting the trees and rocks along her studio, she sifts through her photographs, the riverbank. It was one of those sublime oil sketches, and the notes she has made about slices of time that last a few moments; I took color and other data that a camera cannot cap- a handful of photos and wrote some notes on ture. Illustrated here is McDonald Creek Even- a sketch as it got dark, and then brought it all ing, a superb example of what Peterson does back to my studio, where I did a couple of difso well. It will be on view this summer in the ferent studies to work it all out. The whole exhibition A Timeless Legacy: Women Artists of trip was worth it just for that one moment.” Glacier National Park at MonPeterson is represented by OhBe-Joyful Gallery (Crested Butte tana’s Hockaday Museum of Art; for details, see page XX. STACEY PETERSON (b. and Telluride, CO), Saks Galleries Peterson’s recent account of 1978), McDonald Creek (Denver), and Wild Horse Gallery how this painting came to Evening, 2016, oil on panel, (Steamboat Springs, CO). At Coloexist underscores her total 24 x 30 in., available at the rado’s Evergreen Fine Art Gallery, engagement with nature: “I Hockaday Museum of Art she will also participate in Weekend was lucky enough to take a (August 12–September 20) in the West (which runs through July solo trip to Glacier National 30).
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