Western Art Collector Reviews G. Russell Case Show

G. Russell Case’s works often show the immensity of the land and sky towering over the desert. The size of his subjects is imposing and magnificent-terrifying when you think of your own place among the grandeur. And yet his monumental mountain cliffs and endless skies feel accessible, in large part to his careful inclusion of human figures, structures, or even just clusters of sheep that offer a visual scale that brings viewers into the painting without overwhelming them in the scenery.

“Adding those things helps with the vastness of the desert,” Case says from his Utah studio. “I’m drawn to these big, open places. And they really are quite big. The land just seems to go on for forever.”

Case, who has a new show opening at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles on May 5, will be presenting as many as 10 new works, including pieces like Between a Rock and a Hard Spot and Vermilion Flats, both of which feature stunning rock formations and distant cliffs, as well as smaller more intimate scenes of sheep and Native American sheepherders in the foreground. “Growing up on and around Indian reservations, you really do get to watch the human-scale elements of the land as these people walk through. It gives you some insight into their daily routine, and their personal stories, as they walk through these landscapes that are ruthless and barren,” the artist says, adding that the ruthless elements of the land can be seen in his works. “You can see in the land the struggle for existence as sagebrush stretches for miles and miles and then out in desert there’s a dot that is a person’s home. It reminds me a lot of Edward hopper, who did these great street scenes in Maine and the shut down shops filled with lonely silence.”

The new show also displays Canyon de Chelly, Repetition in Clay and Autumn Canyon- works that are punctuated with dramatic shadows that caress cliff faces and deeply carved ravines. “Shadows and other dark areas are usually what the composition hangs on. I draw with the shadows, and those areas anchor the painting,” Case says. Shadows are the silent partner in the painting, We see color and light, but it’s those parts of any painting that inform the composition.”

Other works on view include Coming Rain and Spring at Tabletop. Both are colossal landscape scenes with riders trudging through the endless sagebrush amid the monuments of the desert.

For the show exhibition, click here.

Southwest Art Previews G. Russell Case Exhibition

This month Maxwell Alexander Gallery unveils as many as 10 new oil paintings by award-winning artist G. Russell Case, who turns his attention to the warm, desert canyons and sandstone spires of Canyon de Chelly and Vermilion Cliffs National Monuments in northern Arizona. The gallery hosts an artist’s reception on Saturday, May 5, at 6 p.m.

“Russell captures these places in such a classic way,” says gallery director Beau Alexander. “He creates calming landscapes where you can feel the quiet of the desert in them, but he also conveys the vastness of the space and the height of the cliffs, often putting small figures in his paintings for scale.”

 Over the millennia, exposure to the elements has produced rich colors throughout Canyon de Chelly and Vermilion Cliffs, and those colors tend to be even more pronounced in Case’s spare, uncluttered paintings, notes Alexander. “Russell really tries to stick to portraying only what the viewer needs to see. A lot of people compare him to Maynard Dixon and the simpler, modernist techniques of the early 1900s, and Russell falls right into line with that style.” Indeed, Case counts Dixon among his most significant influences, along with American masters Thomas Moran, Robert Henri, and George Bellows. “When I look at Dixon’s field studies on location, they are recorded one time—cleanly,” says Case. “The calligraphy of the recording isn’t manipulated. He had the courage to make a mark, leave it, and move on. That painterly quality gets me excited. I like as much freshness and direct painting as possible.”

 In Spring at Tabletop, Case explores a verdant section of Vermilion Cliffs on the cusp of summertime, when the desert is just starting to explode with color, he says. Rather than portray every craggy crevice of the sandstone canyon in the scene, he instead focused on conveying the “horizontal movement” of the composition. The artist organized the painting into just a few parallel “bands” of scenery: a towering wall of clouds floats over the expansive, rose- tinged canyon and green mesa below, where three Navajo riders add “spots of color and shape” amid the sagebrush. “Usually, I’ll put figures in a painting as an afterthought to create visual interest, drama, impact, and scale,” says Case. “It lets us know the size of things, and it gives the work a finished quality, like the cherry on top.”

The artist spends days at a time sketching, photographing, and painting out in the field, where the scenic details are often overwhelmingly beautiful, and hence, difficult to pare down at his easel. Back at his studio in northern Utah, Case reviews his reference material with a renewed eye, looking for gripping “compositional themes” that supersede the minutiae of a scene. It might be as simple as a large, stormy sky or the “hot” desert cliffs at midday, he says. “When you’re out there, you’re so flooded with information that it’s hard to edit things—you think it’s all beautiful,” notes Case. “In my studio, I’ll create a small painting and then work it up to a big painting, editing things down. The abstract quality behind subject matter is what gets me excited—the big shapes and patterns. I’m continuing to move in a simplified direction—it’s a constant evolving toward how to say more with less, but better.” —Kim Agricola

For more work by G. Russell Case, click here.

Maxwell Alexander Artist Len Chmiel Wins Award at Prix de West

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma June 2017

The 2017 Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale finished up this year’s successful award’s ceremony at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum this past weekend. The show saw $3.1 million in art sales, and brought out 700 fans and collectors to the event, held in Oklahoma City. Maxwell Alexander Gallery attended to support gallery artists Scott Burdick,   G. Russell Case, Len Chmiel, Glenn Dean, Josh Elliot, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Jeremy Lipking, Susan Lyon, John Moyers, Howard Post, Matt Smith, and Tim Solliday.

T. Allen Johnson won the Prix de West Purchase Award and will have his piece “Nursery Tree” joined into the museum’s permanent collection.

Maxwell Alexander Gallery artist Len Chmiel was awarded the first-time Wilson Hurley Memorial Award for landscape painting with piece “Transparent Water Colors”. Bob and Margaret Mills sponsored the award.

The show will continue to exhibit until August 6th, 2017. Included are some highlights from the show below. For more work by Chmiel or other Maxwell Alexander Gallery artists click here.