Randy Bacon: The Colors of West Texas

Randy Bacon:The Colors of West Texas

Exhibition On View • October 26 - December 1, 2012

Cover: Double Mountain, south side (near Rotan), 2012, oil on canvas, 16’’ x 90’’

Collector Preview • October 26-27

Opening Reception • November 3, 5 - 8 pm

Artist Talk • November 17, 2 - 4 pm

Closing Weekend • November 30 - December 1

Randy Bacon:The Colors of West Texas

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is pleased to offer this solo exhibition of paintings by Albany-based artist, Randy Bacon. Patrons familiar with the gallery will at once recognize Randy, his works consistently ranking among the most admired and popular of our offerings. In this show, The Colors of West Texas, the artist does what he does best – depict the broad and colorful vistas of his native country-side in a series of stunning oil paintings.

As a modern-day Texas Regionalist, Randy Bacon conveys his own personal country with a masterful hand. He paints his native West Texas with a keen insight and authenticity which can only be derived from a lifetime of firsthand encounters with the land and its people. The careful study of a Randy Bacon painting makes it abundantly clear that this is an artist at peace with his subject and place. In beautifully rendered compositions, he conveys the panoramic spaces, rich tonality and strong rural character of this mag-nificent area. Like all great Regionalist artists, Bacon’s paintings of Texas subjects reverberate with an underlying narrative of a more universal appeal, his best works assuming a timeless, ethereal quality, containing themes and story lines reaching far beyond the bounds of West Texas. It is little wonder that in his relatively short career, this accomplished artist has met with such popular appeal and critical acclaim. This exhibition, The Colors of West Texas, will only serve to reinforce his already burgeoning reputation as one of our state’s foremost contemporary artists.

We are very proud to present Randy’s latest work in this sterling exhibition. His is bona fide Texas material from the last of the wide-open spaces; and it is certain to be relished by an eager Houston audience. We also express our special thanks to Judy Deaton, Chief Curator at The Grace Museum in Abilene for her poignant and well-written essay on Randy’s work featured in the catalogue essay ac-companying this show. It is an honor and tribute to the artist, as well as the gallery, to have esteemed professionals of Judy’s caliber lending their expertise to this presentation.

For all these reasons, we invite you to experience The Colors of West Texas. For those who love Texas art, this exhibition is certain to be well worth the viewing, with Bacon’s paintings guaranteed to thrill. We look forward to seeing you in the gallery!

Bill Reaves, Jennifer Pryor and Elizabeth O’Dowd

William Reaves Fine Art

Randy Bacon: The Colors of West Texas 1

From the start, Randy Bacon’s paintings have delighted rural and urban dwellers alike with honest, unapologetic represen-tations of his native West Texas. In 2002, after twenty-two suc-cessful years in advertising, he followed his muse and began painting full-time. A 2005 scholarship from Texas Christian Uni-versity was followed by his MFA thesis in painting in 2007. That same year, it was my pleasure to curate his first solo museum exhibition in his hometown of Abilene at The Grace Museum. Since that time, Bacon has returned to live in rural West Texas and has established an impressive track record of exhibitions, awards, and acquisitions.

Living close to where he grew up also means living in the cur-rent reality of his chosen subjects. “Long drives come with the territory. Passing by places I have seen throughout my life, sud-denly a particular light or season change reveals a situation or partial narrative and I see the place anew.” Many of the paint-ings in his show were sparked by Bacon’s discoveries (or redis-coveries) along the highways and back roads of West Texas in the last year. Looking at the paintings, it is easy to imagine the artist pulling his eco-friendly Prius off the road to step out and breath the dusty air or musty scent of approaching rain.

There is a palpable sense of a particular place at a particular moment in time in all of Bacon’s paintings. He is aware that memory plays a part in the depiction, but his ultimate goal is to share his experience of a contemporary place or situation. The subjects are not the pristine far West Texas vistas of the Davis Mountains and the Big Bend that have attracted artists for decades; the places that resonate with Bacon are the often

Local Color: New Paintings by Randy Baconby Judy Tedford Deaton, Chief Curator, The Grace Museum

Randy Bacon: The Colors of West Texas2

overlooked, featureless landscapes scattered with remnants of human attempts to tame the dry, flat land. No cotton this year (between Lamesa and Seminole #9), lightning strikes on the tree-less plain in Taylor County and The oldest house (Odessa) speak volumes about the unseen people who are represented by hum-ble dwellings, telephone poles, lonesome roads and silos. Bacon says, “The rugged landscape reflects the qualities and character-istics of West Texans. They’re present in the paintings even if you can’t see them.” The unspoken honest dignity of survival in an unyielding landscape contributes to the universal appeal of the paintings.

The most recent paintings demonstrate Bacon’s new confidence in trusting his sensory intuition; his gut-level response to what he feels about what he sees. The paintings have never been carica-tures or romanticized visions and Bacon continues to finesse the fine line between the past and the present without sentimental-ity. Old Henry’s House # 3, and other views between Lamesa and Seminole are recurring subjects with a subtle shift in approach. Paintings of long stretches of highway such as Patricia painted in 2007 compared to similar composition and subject in Between Lamesa and Seminole #10 painted in 2012 reveal a new prefer-ence for simplified forms, reduction of photographic detail and complex surfaces. The enriched paint surfaces add depth and inform the subjects with dry palette knife paint applications reminiscent of his men-tor Jim Woodson’s high desert paintings. Bacon credits Woodson with teaching him how thoughts and feelings can be conveyed through technique, composition, color, line and spatial relation-ships. Unlike Woodson, Bacon emphasizes the long horizon and

Local color: the interest or flavor of a locality imparted by the customs and sights peculiar to it and the use of regional detail.

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has adopted an unusually wide format for most of his canvases. A shape Bacon refers to as the windshield view through which most travelers view the sites he depicts. The wide format is also a reference to the letterbox, Panavision cinematic view through which most of the rest of world has pictured the American West.

As the details are reduced in Bacon’s paintings, surface and color take on a more prominent role as expressive elements. In art-speak, local color refers to the actual color of an object. To achieve the sundrenched or hazy hues of his subjects, he pre-fers oil on canvas for the translucent effects and physicality of working with the medium. His painted land- and townscapes are often permeated with the bright orange of the soil of West Texas. “Red dirt” gets its intense color from the iron oxides in the hard, clay soil and it is as much of a challenge for artists as it is for farmers. According to Bacon, “A combination of burnt sienna, raw umber, flesh tint, cadmium orange and dioxazine purple in vary-ing degrees with some titanium white thrown in usually does the trick. But the juxtaposition of other colors also plays a role in achieving the intended color.” The shimmering black-violet of as-phalt on a 100-degree afternoon as seen in Between Lamesa and Seminole #10, demonstrates Bacon’s technical skill as a painter and his ability to relate his experience beyond the visual facts. Bacon continues to present off-road places in West Texas caught in a time warp between success and survival. His emotional connection to the subjects is more apparent in the newest paint-ings. In much the same way an artist greatly admired by Bacon, Edward Hopper, created a personal vision of modern America, Bacon heeds the call to paint an outward expression of his inner life in the context of the rural Texas landscape; fully aware that urban and rural visions of small town and forgotten places exist in reality and in the American imagination.

The new paintings are a reminder that mother nature and human

nurture are ever changing. The dry riverbeds will over flow their banks in the flash floods of spring and eventually will be covered with delicate frost in January; and West Texans will continue to live on the land through drought and wildfire. As timeless as some of the places appear in Bacon’s paintings, we are aware that change is inevitable. The house in Taylor County was lost to fire, wind turbines outnumber windmills in Viento#2, and #3 and the paint on Old Henry’s House #3 has faded.

Knowledgeable of both state and art history, Bacon references 1930s and 1940s Texas Regionalists by painting a personalized view of his region of the state in the early 21st century. While Bacon’s style is more Realist than Regionalist, he does document the state in transition as Jerry Bywaters did in two paintings, Texas Subdivision (1938) and City Suburb at Dusk (1978), painted forty years apart of the same stretch of Northwest Highway in Dallas that went from cotton field to suburbia to strip mall in his lifetime. Bacon, also, documents where he lives and in the pro-cess records the dramatic and as well as the subtle dynamics of change over time.

Bacon’s personal and intimate relationship with the people and places he paints, combined with his eye to finding the extraor-dinary in the ordinary, continues to direct his choice of subjects. Composition, technique and color harmonies are carefully ma-nipulated to create poignant and delicately balanced formal ar-rangements resulting in images layered with poetic meaning and modern moments of revelation.

Randy Bacon: The Colors of West Texas Exhibition Checklist

Title of Work Date Medium Dimensions1 114 West #2 2012 oil on canvas 17’’ x 80’’2 Near Estelline 2012 oil on canvas 17.5’’ x 80’’3 The oldest house (Odessa) 2012 oil on canvas 18.5’’ x 60’’4 Liquor, Beer, Wine (Marfa) #2 2012 oil on canvas 12’’x 24’’5 Bomarton 2012 oil on canvas 16’’ x 36’’6 Memorial Day (Windthorst) 2011 oil on canvas 24’’ x 48’’7 Prairie Temples (Albany) 2011 oil on canvas 15’’ x 30’’8 Old Henry’s House #3 (Lamesa) 2011 oil on canvas 17’’ x 60’’9 Taylor County 2010 oil on canvas 27’’ x 80’’

10 Near Stanton 2012 oil on canvas 12.5’’ x 84’’11 Near Lubbock (The Spade Ranch) 2011 oil on canvas 15.75’’ x 78’’12 Blue Norther (Abilene) 2012 oil on canvas 16.5’’ x 72’’13 Between Lamesa and Seminole, #10 2012 oil on canvas 11’’ x 80’’14 Double Mountain, south side (near Rotan) 2012 oil on canvas 16’’ x 90’’15 Double Mountain, southwest side (near Rotan) 2012 oil on canvas 40’’ x 78’’16 Monticello (Fort Worth) 2010 oil on canvas 32’’ x 20’’17 No cotton this year (between Lamesa and Seminole #9) 2012 oil on canvas 16’’ x 20’’18 Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos 2012 oil on canvas 26’’ x 72’’19 Llano River at Highway 87 2012 oil on canvas 20’’ x 16’’20 The Canadian River (near Canadian) 2011 oil on canvas 24’’ x 30’’21 Mesquite 2012 oil on canvas 24’’ x 36’’22 Between Lamesa and Seminole, #7 2011 oil on canvas 30’’ x 40’’23 Conversation 2011 oil on canvas 10’’ x 20’’24 Viento #2 2012 oil on canvas 18’’ x 24’’25 Viento #3 2011 oil on canvas 18’’ x 24’’26 Marfa Dusk 2011 oil on canvas 15’’ x 30’’27 Winter Barn (near Hillsboro) 2012 oil on canvas 11’’ x 24’’


1. 114 West #2, 2012, oil on canvas, 17’’ x 80’’

2. Near Estelline, 2012, oil on canvas, 17.5’’ x 80’’


3. The oldest house (Odessa), 2012, oil on canvas, 18.5’’ x 60’’


4. Liquor, Beer, Wine (Marfa) #2, 2012, oil on canvas, 12’’ x 24’’


5. Bomarton, 2012, oil on canvas, 16’’ x 36’’


6. Memorial Day (Windthorst), 2011, oil on canvas, 24’’ x 48’’


7. Prairie Temples (Albany), 2011, oil on canvas, 15’’ x 30’’


8. Old Henry’s House #3 (Lamesa), 2011, oil on canvas, 17’’ x 60’’


9. Taylor County, 2010, oil on canvas, 27’’ x 80’’


10. Near Stanton, 2012, oil on canvas, 12.5’’ x 84’’

11. Near Lubbock (The Spade Ranch), 2011, oil on canvas, 15.75’’ x 78’’


12. Blue Norther (Abilene), 2012, oil on canvas, 16.5’’ x 72’’


13. Between Lamesa and Seminole, #10, 2011, oil on canvas, 30’’ x 40’’

14. Double Mountain, south side (near Rotan), 2012, oil on canvas, 16’’ x 90’’


15. Double Mountain, southwest side (near Rotan), 2012, oil on canvas, 40’’ x 78’’


16. Monticello (Fort Worth) 2010, oil on canvas,

32’’ x 20’’


17. No cotton this year (between Lamesa and Seminole #9), 2012, oil on canvas, 16’’ x 20’’


18. Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos, 2012, oil on canvas, 26’’ x 72’’


19. Llano River at Highway 872012, oil on canvas, 20’’ x 16’’


20. The Canadian River (near Canadian), 2011, oil on canvas, 24’’ x 30’’


21. Mesquite, 2012, oil on canvas, 24’’ x 36’’


22. Between Lamesa and Seminole, #7, 2011, oil on canvas, 30’’ x 40’’


23. Conversation, 2011, oil on canvas, 10’’ x 20’’


24. Viento #2, 2011, oil on canvas, 18’’ x 24’’ 25. Viento #3, 2011, oil on canvas, 18’’ x 24’’


26. Marfa Dusk, 2011, oil on canvas, 15’’ x 30’’


27. Winter Barn (near Hillsboro), 2012, oil on canvas, 11’’ x 24’’


• 1957, Born in Abilene, Texas • 1980, BFA, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas• 1987-2002, President of Stuart Bacon Advertising and Public Relations, Fort Worth, Texas• 2003, Summer Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont• 2007, MFA, Texas Christian University, on full scholarship, Fort Worth, Texas• Present, lives and works in Albany, Texas

Bacon in his studio.


Selected Biographical and Career Highlights

• 2005-2011, Preservation is the Art of the City, Community Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas• 2006, Art in the Metroplex, TCU Art Gallery, Fort Worth, Texas• 2007, A Sense of Place, TCU Art Gallery, Fort Worth, Texas• 2007, A Sense of Place, The Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas• 2007, The Artist’s Eye, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas• 2007, The Texas Five, Museum of East Texas Culture, Palestine, Texas• 2007-2012, Annual Invitational, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas• 2009, A Cell of One’s Own, The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas• 2009, Trinity Perspectives, Views of an Urban River, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, Texas• 2010, Art of the Red River War: A Clash of Cultures on the Southern Plains, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas• 2010, Drawing on the Past: Selections from the Bobbie and John Nau Collection of Art, The Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas• 2011-2012, Familiar Territory: The Art of Randy Bacon, The National Ranching Heritage Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas


Selected Exhibitions

• The Grace Museum• Mansefeldt Corporation• Burlington Northern Santa Fe• The Bobbie and John Nau Collection of Texas Art• Moncrief Oil• Baldwin Anthony Securities, Inc.• Woodbine Development Corporation

Selected Public Collections

William Reaves Fine Art2313 Brun Street • Houston, Texas • 77019

Tel: 713.521.7500Fax: 713.521.7504

www.reavesart.comEmail: [email protected]

Documents

Randy Bacon: The Colors of West Texas