California-based painter S.C. Mummert has a sweet spot he likes to focus on from the 20th century. “Oh yeah, it’s that 1930s, 1940s and 1950s period. Right there, that’s my zone,” he says. “It’s the fashion, the old cars and trucks, the cowboy gear, the high-wasted jeans…it all speaks to a fascinating period for me.”
The artist will be highlighting that era with a new batch of work that will be on view starting in September at Sorrel Sky Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He admits that making that period come to life means he has to do a lot of wrangling of props, as well as research. He was recently in Arizona at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West admiring all the bits and spurs, saddles, gauntlets and other Western items. “You just can’t find those great things anywhere and when you do they want to pry the gold from your teeth,” he says. 
Room With a View, oil on linen, 36 x 48”
For one of his new works, There Goes My Cowboy, he had some help from Cowboy Artists of America sculptor Mehl Lawson, who had restored a 1956 hot rod truck. Lawson put him in touch with a truck club in San Diego. “The president of the group calls me and these folks are some of the nicest people I’ve met. They tell me they have a perfect truck for me. Not only do they let me use the truck, they come to me, right to my studio,” Mummert says. “The truck arrives and this thing is smoking, just really beautiful. Turns out its Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina’s truck. And then my model, who I had already set up for the visit, she’s a truck person so she’s just as excited. All the planets aligned and there was electricity in the air.”
There Goes My Cowboy, oil, 36 x 48”
The finished work shows a girl in a hat leaning out the truck’s side window, sort of looking back with admiration. Her cheeks are flushed and there’s a twinkle in her eye. Mummert is known as much for his women figures as his time period, and there is often an overlap. He calls them pinups, though he stresses his images are more wholesome and innocent than that name might suggest.
“Some pinup art is overly sexualized, but my work is trying to create something different. I don’t want the wrong vibe in these paintings, so I’ll use my wife as the canary in the coalmine to make sure I’m doing the right things,” he says. One of the works in this theme is Six Pack, showing a girl in a red shirt with a gun and holster loosely around her hips. “I was aiming to show this really lovely girl with a very feminine pose, but also always have that feel for the period and place within the West.”
Six pack, oil, 40 x 24”These new pieces show that Mummert is creating unique work that should delight new and seasoned collectors. “I love having that nostalgia back to a different time,” he adds. “These are the people and subjects that energize me and keep my passion going.” —
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