Western Art Collector Magazine Previews John Moyer's Debut Exhibition

John Moyers has found a great place to reside within Western art: his work has a traditional feel to it, especially in his incredible paint quality that’s loose and evocative, and yet he has an experimental streak in him that pushes his work into the contemporary wing of the genre. 

“I’ve always tried to do my own thing, to paint different stuff,” Moyers says. “I paint for myself. And sometimes experimentation comes out of it because I would be bored out of my mind if I couldn’t experiment.”

Moyers will have a new show, “Echoes of the Land,” opening June 15 at Maxwell alexander Gallery in Los Angeles. It’s his first solo venture at the gallery, where he has previously had work available in the group shows. Of the eight new works that will be available will be new Native American portraits, and several new cowboy paintings, including “Turbulence,” which shows a rider valiantly clinging to his bucking horse.

“I try to do one or two cowboy pieces a year, so when I do them I want them to be very different. Of course, over the years there has been so many cowboy paintings, so it can be a real struggle to really develop a unique painting, so I fiddle with them for a long time. I like this one because it’s a variation on the bucking horse,” Moyers says, adding that he and his wife, painter Terri Kelly Moyers, recently moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to California. “The move kept us busy for a long time, so I’m excited to once again be doing more cowboy pieces like this.”

While the cowboys remain an important part of Moyers’ studio, it’s his depictions fo Native Americans for which he is most widely known and respected. The new show will include pieces suck as “Chinook Winds” and “Kooteney Man”, both of which feature the artist’s experimental use of color. In both paintings he’s uses warm colors and their complementary hues-including electric blues, lightly applied pinks, and glowing oranges- to create magnificent portraits that present these historic figures in a more contemporary style, one more similar to Andy Warhol than Frank Tenney Johnson.

 “I love playing around with complementary colors, just really focusing on them, even substituting colors in where they work best,” he says. “This is where experimentation is really fun for me because I can dial in all these different colors – I use a really high-end color wheel- in really unexpected ways. I’m trying to stay away from these, romanticized, cookie-cutter Native American figures. I want them to feel more spiritual and unexpected.”

To view more work by John Moyers and the exhibition, click here.

Southwest Art Magazine Previews John Moyer's "Echoes of the Land"

In his first solo exhibition in over a decade, acclaimed painter John Moyers breathes new life into iconic western themes with his bright, modernist palette and invigorating, design-focused imagery. The show, which opens this month at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles, represents the next chapter in the artist’s ongoing efforts to “push his limits,” says gallery director Beau Alexander. “John is in his mid to late career, but he’s still developing his work; he isn’t creating the same old pieces,” observes Alexander. “He’s one of the best western artists alive, so for him to push the envelope is really exciting.”

Echoes of the Land, as the exhibition is titled, features some of the oil painter’s favorite motifs, including Southwestern landscapes and portraits of American Indians dressed in historically precise, trice-specific garments and headdresses from his own extensive artifact collection. To kick off the show, Moyers is on hand at an afternoon reception on Saturday, June 15, and he isn’t traveling far to attend: The longtime resident of Santa Fe, NM, moved to the Los Angeles area a few years ago. “It adds another artistic stamp to L.A.,” enthuses Alexander. “Many of today’s top western artist live within an hour of the city.’

Moyer’s move to the City of Angels has also enabled the pair to collaborate more closely. In preparation for this show, Alexander visited Moyers’ home near Pasadena. “When I walked into John’s studio and saw his painting of a bucking bronco, it caught me immediately,” says Alexander of the vivid, high-octane scene entitled “Turbulence”. “It almost feels like a William Herbert Dunton painting from the early 1900’s.”

Moyer’s, however, puts a contemporary spin on the classic western subject by portraying the rearing horse and his intrepid rider from a bold, head on view-point, rather than the more traditional side angle. “It creates a 3-D feeling-you feel the motion and the action in the painting,” notes Alexander.

Viewers can expect to see other refreshingly modern, convention-breaking perspectives like this in the show. “I’m having fun,” says Moyers. “I’m experimenting with color and design a lot. As an artist, you always have to try new things.” –Kim Agricola

To view the exhibition, click here.

Western Art Collector Previews Cumulus Show

Sky Sonnets

Maxwell Alexander Gallery is hosting a group exhibition titled Cumulus starting March 9 and continuing through the month. The show highlights cloud- centric works featuring brand new paintings by Tony Abeyta, Eric Bowman, Scott Burdick, Glenn Dean, Phil Epp, Danny Galieote, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Bryan Haynes, Brett Allen Johnson, Michael Klein, Ed Mell, Eric Merrell, John Moyers, Terri Kelly Moyers, Dennis Ziemienski and others.

Bowman’s submission, Levels and Degrees, was inspired by the artist’s recent work done on a trip to southern Utah. “The monumental land formations there are really amazing in both size and shape, and support the focal subject and vertical design of the large clouds in this composition,” says Bowman. “They give it more of an overall large-scale, heroic feel. I also wanted to show the juxtaposition of land masses that are eons old, surrounded by vaporous entities that were just born that very morning.” Using textured layers of paint to forge out a depth and sense of scale, Bowman distills the sensation of wonder and awe when surrounded by such grand natural scenes. “I like to idealize the flow of the line, and clouds that allow just that. They come in all shapes and sizes, so I was able to not only create the scale and shape I wanted, but also build texture upon texture by allowing drying time in between painting sessions.”

Inspiration for Ziemienski’s piece Regarding the Trail came while exploring the majestic red rocks of northern Arizona and New Mexico. “What I found to be most exciting was the mysterious light and shadow of the rocks inspiring a balance with the dramatic upheaval of the clouds—a world where you can lose yourself,” the artist says. Evoking an almost surreal sense of place, the painting’s small subjects stroll beneath a massive cloud, which looms over the canyons with an opposing, yet awe-inspiring, presence

Tranquil and serene, Epp’s Hilltop Trio captures a restful moment between a small team of wild horses as they gaze at a distant horizon. “I have the privilege of living near large ranches that house large groups of horses,” says Epp. “Horses on a hilltop with a big sky backdrop is something that I personally observe on a weekly basis. I’m always inspired by the view and the painting subject.” Epp’s passion for sprawling sky scenes is particularly apparent in this recent work, with bright, vivid blues and buoyant whites dominating the landscape. “This painting is more about western scale, open space and distance than it is about horses,” he explains.

Burdick’s Grandma’s Clouds tells the story of a girl and her family from Shawnee, Oklahoma. Last year, the artist visited his painting’s subject, Serena, at her grandmother’s house to do a series of drawings of her and her relatives. Serena, who is half Choctaw and half Ponca, offered the opportunity to capture this scene. “In between drawing sessions, we would go outside on the ranch and take photographs, which are what I did this painting from when I got home to my North Carolina studio after the show.” From his references, Burdick set out to build a sense of communion between land and sky. “For this painting, I wanted to create a dynamic composition where Serena was an integrated part of the landscape and the clouds. My hope was that the varied angles in the grasses, plus the thick application of paint, would create a sense of movement in the scene. I wanted the abstract chaos of the grass to act as counterpoint to the refined painting of Serena’s face and the soft serenity of the sky. The fact that she was looking into the distance beyond the frame of the canvas hopefully creates a bit of mystery for the viewer to wonder about.”

The Cumulus group exhibition will open March 9 at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles, California.

 For more work from Cumulus, 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.