Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles will present new works from Cowboy Artists of America member Grant Redden beginning April 6. Redden, who frequently explores less-traveled areas of the West such as sheepherding and farming, will focus entirely on classic cowboy material for this new show, his first solo exhibition at the gallery.

“These will be signature paintings, paintings with subject matter that is very familiar to me,” he says. “I’ll also be informed by historical painters for these works. I’m never consciously trying to make my work like theirs, but they certainly inspire me, especially when I’m going through depression and doubt—something all painters feel at some point in the studio—with every brushstroke. That may sound like it’s miserable to be an artist, but it’s not. It’s actually a lot of fun, but artists doubt everything they do sometimes. It’s part of the process.”

Redden will be turning much of his attention to cowboys from the early 1900s, particularly the 1920s and 1930s. William Herbert “Buck” Dunton and Frank Tenney Johnson are two artists who speak to the time period he’s painting. In one new painting, The Call of the Night Bird, Redden seems to call out

to Johnson with a nocturne scene. But where Johnson would use looser brushstrokes and more primal paint application, Redden paints a tighter picture with more detail and more nuance in the light. It creates a wonderful call- and-response aspect with Johnson, one of the great cowboy painters.

The Wyoming artist says that he did not use a photo reference for the painting, simply because it’s nearly impossible to capture moonlight in a photograph or even a sketch. “Paintings like this are almost entirely from imagination, because once you’re out there in the moonlight there is not much information

to record. You have to invent and imagine it all in the studio,” he says. “It’s kind of a theatrical production with the nocturne. Some are successful, and some aren’t. But when they’re successful it’s a reward because it’s all you, every piece of it.”

In the piece the horse is white, mostly because white horses are more fascinating for the artist and the viewer. “A white horse has so much reflection that it can make things around it more interesting. They’re like aspen trees in that way,” he adds. “As for black horses, just hit me in the back of the head. They just absorb all the light around them. If you can successfully paint a black horse you deserve a medal.”

Another work in the show is Old Unreliable, a painting of the timeless image of a rider on a bucking horse. The painting has a pleasing convergence of lines—from distant mountain ridges and rocky cliff faces to closer outcroppings carved into the desert soil—that guide the eye toward the leaping horse and its cool, collected rider who clings to its back.

Redden’s first solo show at Maxwell Alexander Gallery will continue through April 27. VIEW IMAGES FROM THE EXHIBITION HERE

In a small solo show opening at Maxwell Alexander Gallery on Saturday, April 6, Wyoming artist Grand Redden captures timeless vignettes of the cowboy, his horse, and the land upon which he works. If the showcase conjures the spirit of early cowboy artists like Fran Tenney Johnson and W. Herbert Dunton, who captured the Old West, Redden wouldn’t mind the comparison. In the half dozen oil paintings he brings to the show, the artist seeks to share a bit of his own western heritage with viewers.

Redden’s paternal ancestors were among the first pioneers to settle in southwest Wyoming, and he himself grew up in the region on his father’s sheep and cattle ranch. Today he lives with his wife and family in the area, where he raises a small herd of sheep, chickens, and a few cows on 120 acres of pastureland. It’s a way of life that has always appealed to the artist— modernized methods of farming aside. “I really don’t have much interest in painting tractors,” he admits unapologetically. “With some of my work, I try to make it look like the cowboy and western life from 1900 to the 1930s. The Zane Grey and Gene Autry period is an exciting and interesting time to people, and I think contemporary desires are reaching back to that time.”

Over the nearly three decades he has been painting, Redden has studied with acclaimed artists ranging from Jim Norton to Gerald Fritzler to Walt Gonske. He has also closely observed the techniques of a variety of living and deceased masters. “How I paint is as important to me as what I paint,” says Redden. who was inducted into the exclusive Cowboy Artists of America in 2012. “The longer I paint, the more excited I get about the craftsmanship that goes into a well-made painting—the textures, the colors, the design. I’m more focused on using large shapes and bright colors in a harmonious way, and I use a lot of sanding and glazing.”

Also propelling Redden forward on his creative path is the ongoing urge to share his world with others. “If you haven’t ridden a bobsled with a load of hay, it’s amazing—the sounds, the smells,” says the artist. Of course, while he can’t arrange for viewers to physically experience such pleasures he adds, “I can paint it for them.” And being able to do that, says Redden, “is like being paid to eat ice cream.”