On May 20, at King Galleries’ location in Santa Fe, New Mexico, painter Michael Esch will conduct a painting demonstration that will be followed by an exhibition of small works. Titled Sunset Clouds, the event and week-long show will introduce new collectors to the work of an artist who is deeply inspired by the landscape of the Southwest.
“Michael Esch captures the drama and beauty of rolling clouds and Western sunsets in his realistic oil paintings,” says Charles S. King, owner of King Galleries. “While they take time to create realism on a large scale, the impact on the viewer is breathtaking.”
Mile Marker 108, oil on canvas, 60 x 36"
Based in Colorado, Esch has worked in the art world for more than 40 years in several mediums, including oil and acrylic paint, and multimedia glass installations. He has also done a number of commissions for private, corporate and institutional collections. He enjoys the challenge of making art. “Nothing worthwhile is easy or without challenge, and that is how I approach art,” he says. “My cloudscape and landscape paintings are a relatively straightforward way to express how I feel about nature, how striking it is now, and how it may have looked hundreds of years ago. I will often erase human development from my work and paint as realistically as possible to convey an accurate vision of how my mind’s eye sees the environment. All too often, civilization creates ugliness; my work is a window into how nature may appear without human intervention.”
Aguilar Exit, oil on canvas, 48 x 36"
Exit 89, oil on canvas, 36 x 48"
Esch continues: “I try to be as overt as possible in scale, movement and expression in the large-scale mural and multimedia installations. I painted the largest painting on canvas in the world at the Air Force Academy (1997, 60 by 320 feet), and it remains overpowering to viewers below. My multimedia glass installations are also about visual impact, nature in its unspoiled state, and interaction with the work by moving past it. I hope that my art will impact the world in such a way that people can see the beauty of the natural world the way that I do and influence the preservation of unspoiled environments.”
CR102, oil on canvas, 60 x 48"
New works in the show include images of the Southwest, including several that are identified only by mile marker or exit number from the highway, which shows how the beauty of the West can be found in mundane and unexpected places.
The show will hang through May 27. —
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