It’s somewhat rare for a painting to generate the kind of buzz that George Carlson’s painting Mayday! did at the Masters of the American West. And not just days before the show, but months before visitors streamed into the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. So when Mayday! was named the Masters Best of Show, it came as no surprise to many collectors.
George Carlson, Mayday!, oil on linen, 36 x 36”
The painting, showing a coyote impaled and limp on a metal fencepost, was simultaneously horrific and also strangely gripping. “Mayday!is a painting I never set out to paint; the content doesn’t coincide with my feelings toward nature,” Carlson wrote about the work. “So what compelled me to paint a dark subject as this? I witnessed this scene while driving gravel roads not far from my studio, looking for possible inspirations for paintings. When I came upon this scene on that May evening, I quickly pulled my pickup over and got out. I quietly stood studying the moment in the cool breeze of evening light, and the longer I absorbed this experience, the more convinced I felt it should be expressed in paint. The painting is about contrasts: the beauty of the spring landscape in all its verdant promise of life, and the coyote, with its lower jaw wired open, in the finality of death. ‘Mayday!’ is a military distress call, hence the title.”
Brenda Kingery, Copper Faces, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40”
Other winners at the annual show were glassmaker Preston Singletary, who was given the museum purchase award; Walter Matia won in the sculpture category; Steve Kestrel won the Bob Kuhn Wildlife Award; Brenda Kingery won the Gayle Roski Stories of the West Award for narrative art; and John Fawcett won the Gene Autry Memorial Award for his body of submitted work. The John J. Geraghty Award, created to recognize the advancement of contemporary Western art, was given to Beau Alexander, co-owner of Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles.
The Masters of the American West will remain on view through March 26. —
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