Animated and convivial with the probing mind of a philosopher, Duke Beardsley is passionate about life in general—and art in particular.
His art, a contemporary take on traditional Western subject matter, reconciles his “dual/duel” exposure to ranching culture and the urban world. Therein, as the double entendre suggests, lies both harmony and tension.
Manta, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 32”Beardsley brings both to the canvas. Loosely defined but unmistakable horses and riders move toward the viewer but rather than emerging from a cloud of kicked-up dirt and dust, it could be a pattern of more horses and riders, akin to wallpaper or, as in some of his newer pieces, purely abstract. His use of repetition, in backgrounds and foregrounds—and its allusion to print-making—indicate the influences of abstract expressionism and pop art on his work.
Though ranching runs deep in his family and Beardsley spent much of his youth in that environment, by no means would he call himself a cowboy. Drawing and a deep love for “all things cowboy” was a constant in his life from the beginning but when it was time for college, Beardsley headed east to study art history at Middlebury College in Vermont. Then his intellectual curiosity led him to Los Angeles where he enrolled in a pre-med program. Everything changed when, at a friend’s behest, he walked in the Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design. He never looked back.
Cacto, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 32"His career took off swiftly. During his last year of art school, in 1998, Beardsley went to Denver to see about a gallery and a girl; both worked out and he’s been back in his home state ever since.
“I did not grow up in any semblance of Charlie Russell’s West. Neither, really, did Charlie himself. Or Remington,” says Beardsley. “Mine is this eclectic clash between urban and rural. The question I've asked myself is ‘how do I capture this?’”
(To drive home that this is not a criticism of either great artist, Beardsley recounts going to a Frederic Remington exhibition at the Denver Art Museum many years ago. “I was there so long the security guard started following me around from painting to painting. I wanted to crawl into them…it was all I could do not to lick them—I was hooked.”)
For Beardsley, the first step in articulating his own experience of the West was removing the cowboy iconography from the safety and predictability of traditional landscape settings. Another was introducing the bright colors and repeating imagery in what he calls his “line up riders” series.
Macca, oil on canvas, 60 x 60" “As I started to remove those elements, this iconography began to take on a different meaning to me,” Beardsley says. “And the random patterning of a background can invite so much imagination from the viewer.”
Some of his current work is stripped down even further, the form of his faceless riders coalescing out of brazen strokes alive with energy, the soft definition more evocative than if Beardsley had provided more detail.
That has brought up a new challenge for Beardsley—when to know when a canvas is complete. “Do I have the discipline and the courage and the smarts to stop when I think I should stop and let something be more minimal than the others?” he asks.
“That’s really hard. To ask yourself when enough is enough. To ask yourself ‘have you accomplished the goal?’ I’m learning to tap into that I hope. What is the goal? I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I get there.
One of his goals is to push the representation of traditional Western iconography to its limit—but as of yet, he hasn’t found it.
Lazo, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 32"“Everything I have thrown at this iconography, it handles with ease,” he shares. “It’s so hardy. It can stand up to it. It’s beloved in our collective imagination for a reason, not for what it is, but for what it means in our mind—ruggedness, endurance.
“Every time I try to challenge it—and this is not out of malice—the genre can stand up to it. It comes out the other side intact and deserving. I’m just asking it to be what I’ve never seen it be.”
New work by Beardsley will be on display in an upcoming exhibition at Altamira Fine Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, that opens with a reception on March 16 from 7 to 9 p.m. —
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