Tom Browning, Cut-Off, 2014, oil, 16 x 40”

On October 14, the unique exhibition returns to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. It will feature 11 artists who represent a dynamic and diverse group of Western artists working in many mediums and styles. The artists are William Alther, Thomas Blackshear II, Tom Browning, Scott Burdick, Glenn Dean, Jane DeDecker, Ralph Oberg, Dan Ostermiller, Roseta Santiago, Mian Situ and Daniel Sprick.

Mian Situ, The Trapper’s Morning, 2018, oil on linen, 24 x 29”

For Burdick, he took great pleasure in revisiting work from the earliest parts of his career, including paintings inspired by a trip to Mexico in 1991. “The next year, I volunteered in South Dakota at a Lakota Indian reservation and lived with a Lakota family for a week. The grandfather recounted his traumatic experience of having been forcibly taken from his parents along with other Native children and raised in a church-run boarding school where they were beaten if they spoke their native language. I did drawings of the entire family and gave them my portraits as a thank-you gift for sharing their home and knowledge with me. These were the first Western works of art I’d done,” Burdick says. “The grandfather asked me never to visit Mount Rushmore, which had been a sacred mountain of their people before being stolen by the U.S. government when gold was found there. I promised. This led to reading the history of the West from the Native, Black, Hispanic and Asian perspective—and I was astonished at all the things left out of my American history textbooks in high school and all those Hollywood Westerns I grew up watching as a city kid in Chicago.”

Roseta Santiago, Waitin’ on Juanito, oil, 30 x 30”

The artist continues: “Each of the paintings in the show reflect my continuing education as I’ve traveled with my wife and fellow artist, Susan Lyon, painting people from across the world and learning from them. Each is an opportunity to read about a place and its history and religion, and then talk with our models, guides and people we encounter. Artists, desert nomads, neighbors, people of differing shades of skin, religious belief and culture. From each and every one of these, I’ve learned something I wouldn’t have known otherwise. The landscape itself sometimes whispers secrets when no other human is within earshot.”

Daniel Sprick, Moses and Joshua, oil on board, 20 x 20”

For Santiago, being asked to participate in this prestigious show came as a welcome surprise in her studio. “Here I am the only female painter! These are powerful artists that I am honored to show with,” she says, noting that she is also honored to show at the Woolaroc, which was the home of prominent collector and oilman Frank Phillips. “I am a relentless searcher and storyteller and am thrilled to stand with these artists.”

Scott Burdick, The Gathering, oil on linen, 70 x 68”

William Alther will be showing five new paintings in the exhibition, works that he calls an “eclectic mix of animal and landscape subjects. The work is really just a continuation of what I’ve been doing all along, although I’m continuously learning, discovering and incorporating new things such as particular paint mixtures or ways of applying paint. So I certainly hope there is improvement and evolution happening whether it’s subtle or obvious,” he says. “Like most artists, I have some old pieces that make me cringe but some still hold up. My development has been gradual but steady and, perhaps most significantly, my consistency of quality is better.”

Thomas Blackshear II, Red, oil on canvas, 31 x 23¼”

Dean’s retrospective works go back to 2016, and says he doesn’t see a huge departure from where he is now. “When looking back to earlier works, I hope that it’s evident that there’s a difference in the work, but also evident that it’s work from the same artist, just at a certain stage of learning and growing,” he says. “I hope I will look back someday at the work I’m doing today and feel that same way; that it was work done at a certain stage of learning and growing. Seeing paintings from the past can be a funny thing. Sometimes I’m disappointed by seeing older work because it doesn’t seem very good and other times I feel like my work was better back then. However, I do tend to stay focused on moving forward with my work, so looking back isn’t something I do regularly.”

Jane DeDecker, Sojourner Truth, 2022, bronze, 27 x 14 x 9”

DeDecker, one of two sculptors in the show, also noticed her work hasn’t changed too drastically from earlier in her career. “I was slightly surprised that my work in overall appearance had not changed. I have always embraced what people call stylistically loose sculptures with works that are more descriptive. Did then and still do,” she says. “I feel now that I have a better understanding of why these two different approaches enhance a body of work that is deeper and broader. I think my more descriptive work retains a gestural, lyrical quality while, in turn, through figurative study and storytelling, my looser work is more direct.”