Grant Redden’s roots in the West run deep. One ancestor fought in the Revolutionary War. Another was a scout for the Prophet Joseph Smith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His father was the foreman of a ranch with 21,000 head of sheep and later had his own ranch with 5,000 ewes and 300 cows. His mother was born in a log cabin and rode a horse to school in a one-room schoolhouse. Grant worked on the ranch, but he always had a sketchbook with him.
Viewing Back Trail, oil, 16 x 12”
Grant Redden watches the cattle come in at the Spade Ranch near Canadian, Texas, during the October 2020 trail ride with the Cowboy Artists of America. Photo by Ben Christensen.
He went to college, earned a degree in agricultural economics, and worked as a real estate appraiser for 10 years, because he was told and believed he couldn’t make a living as an artist. “Making art is something inside you,” he says. “Some never think of it. Others figure out numbers. I’ve always had this bug to paint or draw the interesting and wonderful things I see. You ignore that at your peril.”
When he was nearly 30, he went to see Jim Norton who lived near his family’s ranch and who had recently been inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America. “I told him, ‘I want to be an artist,’ and took a bunch of watercolors that I had been doing on my own. He spent about 10 minutes looking at them and said, “They’re better than I thought they’d be!’ He took me into his studio and said, ‘This is what you need to do. Get a French easel and paint outside. And study the deceased masters.’ Every once in a while he’d say, ‘This painting is ready for a gallery,’ or he’d buy it himself.”
Wyoming Nocturne, oil, 18 x 24”
Fast forward to 2012 when Grant, himself was inducted into the CAA, winning a gold and a silver medal in the group’s 2013 exhibition. Since then, he has won a number of gold medals as well as the Stetson Award, voted on by the active members of the CAA for the best overall exhibition.
Inspired by the work ethic of his ancestors, the past masters he has studied and his CAA peers, he has surround himself with people who support his effort, most prominently his wife, Annette.
He paints the cowboys of the early 20th century who didn’t have 21st-century equipment and “had to get on a horse and do the work.” He also dresses up his children and others for figurative paintings of pioneer life. Landscapes, however, may be his first love. “If you can develop the emotion you feel in a landscape without anything else,” he says, “that’s the ultimate.”
Coming Apart in the Brush Pasture, oil, 18 x 24”
The most important thing to him is the medium…paint. Thinly applied to reveal the canvas or gessoed board, or in a thick impasto, his paintings are lush with texture and color. Norton had suggested he study Sargent and Sorolla among others—masters of paint as well as subject.
“I saw a Sorolla exhibition in Dallas. I walked in and saw paintings I’d been studying in books. It was a spiritual experience. To see him just draw with paint put down with freedom and skill. Emil Carlsen is another favorite artist—how he built up his surface and introduced unexpected color. I love the layering.“ The foreground of Wyoming Nocturne shows Grant’s own mastery of paint with “unexpected color” and expressive brush strokes reminiscent of the artists he admires, but very much his own.
Red Knob Pass, oil, 16 x 16”
“I’ve also learned a lot from the CAA artists,” he says, “what good men they are. I always think, when I’m doing a painting, ‘How will this measure up?’ It makes me work harder.”
His latest work will be shown at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles, April 10 through 24. Among the paintings is Wyoming Nocturne. “Frank Tenney Johnson’s nocturnes are the world standard,” he says. “His paint quality and textures in the nocturnes and even his daytime paintings are the best. I never thought I’d do nocturnes but decided to try one. I love painting nocturnes now. They’re all invented and I have to decide what to put in and what to leave out.
High Country Bronco, oil, 24 x 18”
“One time I was driving down an old dirt road and saw that our neighbor’s draft horses had got out and were standing on the road.
I walked up to them to turn them around. One of them was a monster and as I looked up at him in the moonlight I thought, ‘This is fabulous!’”
He says, “I don’t paint outside now as much as I should. You get a sense of color from nature but you don‘t get design which is as important as color and value. Design comes from yourself and from studying the greats. You have to keep good company. I look at the masters in black and white to see how they arrange the masses, their dark, light and middle tones.
Evening Blues, oil, 18 x 24”
“I’m trying to get better at the craft,” he continues. “I get excited seeing great craftsmanship, surfaces and drawing. It’s important for me to take the talent I’ve been given and to stand on the tall shoulders of my mentors and those who came before me. My ancestors were hard workers who sacrificed for our generation to make it possible for us to do what we’re doing now. When I want something I can’t figure out, I sometimes rely on a higher power to help me. I do a lot of family-oriented sort of stuff as well. It’s important to paint uplifting work and not to paint a darker world.”—
Grant Redden: Views From the Ranch
April 13-27, 2021
Maxwell Alexander Gallery, 406 W. Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90015
(213) 275-1060, www.maxwellalexandergallery.com
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