Billy Schenck: Resting Place

Painter Billy Schenck unveils new work at Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona.

One of the icons of contemporary Western art, New Mexico painter Billy Schenck, has a new show opening April 2 at Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. The artist—whose Pop Art-inspired works mythologize, and at times demythologize, the West in provocative ways—will be presenting new works that show his fondness for the West as a subject matter.

Along the Jeddito Wash, oil, 36 x 50"

Among the new works are pieces that show his “Western descansos,” which are inspired by the roadside memorials that are common in the Southwest and usually mark a place where a person has died. The tradition, which has its roots in Latin America—the word itself is Spanish and means, loosely, “resting place”—is being given a cowboy theme under Schenck’s brush. “If you travel even a little bit in New Mexico or southern Colorado, you see these descansos along the road where people have died,” the artist says. “I just took them as part of the Southwestern reality and gave them a cowboy sort of treatment with boots and spurs, bandoliers, hats and guns, maybe a cowboy’s favorite beverage of choice like a beer or whiskey, and Navajo blankets. I’ve never seen one like this before so it’s a creation of my own making.”

Sandstone and Slate, oil, 40 x 40"

The works speak to Schenck’s time on the road, which has been significant since he came out West to paint and find inspiration in the land and its people. For 22 years he lived in Apache Junction, Arizona, under the shadow of the Superstition Mountains. But he was traveling too much to Jackson, Santa Fe, Denver and other art destinations, and he needed a hub to call home, which is how he settled in Santa Fe.

Other works in the show include Along the Jeddito Wash, a big 50-inch-wide piece with vibrant color and large central composition with a horse and rider, rocky land features and tall clouds. In Sandstone and Slate, he mixes up the central focus by bringing a rock forward and separating the several riders as they gaze into the horizon.

He was Sorrow Bound, oil, 36 x 30"

Schenck occupies a unique place in Western art because his work is often very modern and invokes Pop Art iconography. And like many of the great Pop artists, Schenck doesn’t split hairs about what is allowed and not allowed when it comes to art. He freely admits he paints with the aid of a projected image and his paintings are essentially a paint-by-number process. But the ideas, the colors, the epic scale, the icons of Western history…there are still many creative levers that Schenck is pulling within his studio. “The irony is that I had imitators in the 1970s and 1980s. They were doing exactly what I was doing, and since then they’ve all gone away and no one is imitating me now,” Schenck says.

Sotuknangu Kachina, oil, 20 x 16"