Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles will host a new group exhibition this August featuring a variety of Western paintings from a handful of important gallery artists. The show will feature painters Howard Post, John Moyers, Eric Merrell, Josh Elliot and G. Russell Case, among others. 
Howard Post, Saguaro, oil, 30 x 24"
Post’s characteristic paintings of the West are on full view in his simple, yet powerful portrait of a cactus in Saguaro. The oil features the grand and formidable cactus—native only to the Sonoran Desert in parts of Arizona, Mexico and California—standing tall against a backdrop of a textured, gradient sky of blue-yellow. 
John Moyers, The Cactus Forest, oil, 18 x 72"
Describing his 18-by-72-inch oil The Cactus Forest, Moyers says, “Sometimes my most successful paintings are when I go against the norm and do the opposite of what is expected. With this painting, the temptation would be to go with a more square format to give more height and length to the cactus but I decided to go in a whole different direction. I used the vertical shapes as design elements to counteract the length of the canvas. I did a color study that was very simple, basically two values—dark against light,” he says. “Doing that gave me the confidence to attack it in a larger format...By making the Mexican revolutionaries leaving the dense cover of cactus and going out into the open, it gives what could be a stagnant and boring composition lots of movement.” 
Eric Merrell, Thrive, oil on canvas mounted to panel, 24 x 18"
John Moyers, Tracks in the Sand, oil, 36 x 24"
One of the pieces Merrell brings to the exhibition is Thrive, depicting two potted plants casting the deep shadows of late afternoon or early evening. “Thrive was painted when my wife and I were living in a small apartment in Eagle Rock called the Doll House, so named because it was around 400 square feet, maybe 450, with two cats...As I didn’t have a studio to work in, I just painted outdoors all the time,” says Merrell. “This was outside our front door, and the challenge of painting a yellow pot in shadow, with a glaze that added to its reflectiveness, was a good color challenge...It seemed representative of where we were at that time, a little squished for space but still managing to stay creative.”
The show will hang August 14 to 28. —
Upcoming Show
Up to 12 works
August 14-28, 2021
Maxwell Alexander Gallery
406 W. Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
(213) 275-1060, www.maxwellalexandergallery.com
Powered by Froala Editor
