DUKE BEARDSEY | SOLO EXHIBITION, SCOTTSDALE, AZ
Altamira Fine Art Scottsdale is pleased to present the 5th annual solo exhibition for Duke Beardsley in Arizona. This will be our largest exhibition yet for the Denver artist, with over 30 paintings, ranging in size from 8 x 10 to 72 x 60.
Never, Not Always: Vital Extravagances from the Lost Trail to Nowhere will feature original works including oil on canvas as well as mixed media on collage, incorporating pages from old western novels, and transparent layering techniques.
Beardsley's work blends modern artistic elements with the traditional icons of the West. “My interest,” he says, “is in pushing up the very romanticized traditional icon of the cowboy into a few essential shapes, forms, and flavors.” The result has made him a consistently popular favorite among collectors of contemporary western art.
Meet the Artist at the show reception on Thursday, January 18th from 6:30-9pm during the Scottsdale ArtWalk. Cocktails and refreshments will be served. The paintings will remain on view through February 3, 2018.
“Color and pattern continue to be a means to an end for me. They’re tools I use to intentionally remove the cowboy icon from the herd-bound and conventional trappings of the traditional western landscape. What does the icon mean out here on its own? Does it still carry the traditional weight and provenance? Rugged individualism, heroic, tough? And what happens when you impose a decidedly and unapologetically romanticized icon in front of an equally stylized and romanticized invented background of a hundred floating cowboys? Today’s west is changing as quickly as ever. And here in the inner mountain west we are facing an unprecedented explosion in population. What will this ask of us all? What will it ask of the environment? Of the resources? Of ranching? Of the cowboy icon itself?” -Duke Beardsley
Call (480) 949-1256 for more details.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Duke Beardsley was born in 1969 in Denver, Colorado. He studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. As a fifth generation Coloradan, Duke Beardsley's western roots run deep and his art reflects those roots. Splitting his time between Denver and his family's cattle ranch in eastern Colorado, he has been drawing and painting images of the American West most of his life.
Beardsley's work has been featured in notable exhibitions across the country such as the Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale, the Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale, The Russell: The Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum, and the Colorado Governor's Invitational Art Show & Sale. His work was also included in Out West: The Great American Landscape, the 2007 groundbreaking contemporary western art exhibition that toured China.
Beardsley won the 2008 Colorado Governor's Award for his piece entitled "Colorado Horsepower." In 2011, he was named Artist of the Year by the Foothills Art Center in Golden, Colorado. His work was commissioned for the 2013 Calgary Stampede poster. His work can be found in noteworthy collections around the world, including the Forbes Collection, Denver Art Museum, Booth Museum of Western Art, and the State of Colorado.