Tucked deep into his California studio, surrounded by paintings and art supplies and wading shoulder-deep into deadline, Morgan Weistling admits he won’t do a solo show ever again. “I swear I say that every time I do a show,” he says with a laugh. “I remember saying it in 2006, too, but here I am. Let me say it again: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever do this again.’”
Morgan Weistling in his studio with his newest pieces. Image courtesy the artist.
Weistling is trying to wrap up the last works for a new collection that will open at Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, on November 11. The show, which will feature around 15 new paintings, is titled The Illuminated Frontier. Each piece will add to the artist’s immersive world of Western characters and stories. Many of the characters exist within a loosely shared universe together, which can create powerful connections between the individual paintings. Imagine it like a TV show about an Old West town at the edge of the frontier. Each painting is an episode; each story a subplot of one of the townspeople.
The Elkhorn Gang, oil, 14 x 34”
For Weistling, this kind of storytelling is rewarding, but it can also be tricky to do at the pace he’s been keeping. “It’s very tough, especially when I have to hold onto these pieces for so long. Normally I would be able to show the pieces off, but with this show I have to paint and paint and then there will be a delayed gratification when people eventually see them, in some cases a year after they were painted,” he says. “That waiting can be tough.” He was initially offered the show nearly three years ago by Brad and Jinger Richardson, owners of Legacy Gallery. He was reluctant to take on such a large project, but Weistling was excited to hit the ground running at Legacy (he had come from Trailside Galleries after 22 years). “They wanted the show to be my grand entrance,” he adds.
Sticks in the Mud, oil, 20 x 28”
One aspect he latched onto very early was this idea of cowboy lore. There was meat for him there. “My work has always had that pioneer influence of the Old West, but I found myself delving deeper on the cowboy aspect,” he says. “Obviously, there is a lot of cowboy art out there and I usually get turned off of the idea of just joining the pack. For instance, I love landscapes, but I don’t think I can add anything to landscapes. If I were to do just a straight landscape, I would want some fresh perspective on it so I was adding to it. I felt like I had something to add about cowboys.”
It was during the planning of the show that Weistling started doing some work on the set of the forthcoming TV series Elkhorn, about the early years of Teddy Roosevelt. He also got involved with the program Wild West Chronicles. He has always surrounded himself in all things Western, but these were exciting escalations that helped jumpstart new ideas. One work directly inspired by Elkhorn is in the Legacy show—Elkhorn Gang, showing six handsomely dressed figures lined up, their weapons at the ready.
Elkhorn Gang is one of several new compositionally complex works that show how the artist has pushed himself for this show. The big one is The Posse,a 30-by-60-inch piece showing nearly a dozen characters in the center of an Old West town. There is a tension in the scene that Weistling punctuates with the many figures and the many eyelines that crisscross through the painting. Danger can seemingly come from anywhere, even from shady figures that lurk in the background.
Apple Picking, oil, 30 x 40”
“I want people to ask themselves, ‘What’s going on here?’ A big grand painting like that is fun to dig into and try to discover what’s happening. Why is the sheriff occupied in the center of the painting? Who is this guy with the canteen? Who’s the guy peeping his head out behind the saloon doors? I want people to question everything,” he says. “Even the horses and the directions they are facing create tension in the painting. I love those zig-zags of the horses.”
Pointing out the clothing on his characters, particularly the proliferation of vests and handkerchiefs wrapped around necks, I ask how he chooses to dress his characters. “What you’re seeing is the authenticity I’m always striving for. When it comes to the historical Old West, there is a lot of misinformation out there as far as what is correct in history and what originated from Hollywood. A lot of what you see is from Hopalong Cassidy and William S. Hart; these guys from the early 1920s who changed the concept of what a cowboy looked like back then,” Weistling says. “But I prefer to go back to the source, which is why I go back to old tintypes. When cowboys allowed themselves to be photographed, they told different stories than what Hollywood wanted to tell.”
Just Passing Through, oil, 35 x 24”
In addition to these large, multi-figure paintings of cowboys, the show will also have some Weistling classics, including a number of images with children. Mashed Potatoes, with a mother and daughter in a kitchen setting, is one example. Another is Sticks in the Mud, which shows a young boy innocently jabbing sticks into mud between his legs. For this one, the artist drew from his own childhood. “These pieces come from an honest place. This one comes directly from my own childhood. I look at it and I’m so grateful I grew up in an age without iPhones and video games and all these other electronics that might have stopped me from having fun outdoors,” he says. “That’s ultimately why I like this time period so much. These were times when kids could still play out in the dirt and have adventures.”
The artist on the set of the Elkhorn series.
Other images include Apple Picking, showing a man and a little girl pulling red apples from a tree as their horse helps himself, and The Day They Road In, an image of two lawmen watching unseen figures carefully from an open door. Weistling lays out just enough story to build a narrative, and then he turns the viewer loose on their own imaginations. In Just Passing Through, a colorful cowboy stands at a saloon entrance wearing a gunbelt and woolly chaps. The figure is incredible, but the viewer’s eye might rightfully be drawn behind him, way back in the saloon where a barkeep seems to look up to acknowledge the cowboy. It’s these little details that bring collectors continuously back to Weistling’s work. “There should always be something more to see,” he says.
The Posse, oil, 30 x 60”
The Illuminated Frontier will open November 11 with an artist reception and sale from 5 to 7 p.m. If collectors want a chance to own any of Weistling’s new pieces, they are encouraged to attend or register for absentee bidding. The pieces are not expected to last.
And who knows if Weistling will ever do a solo show again. “Who am I kidding,” he adds, “of course, I would do it again. This is what artists live for.” —
The Illuminated Frontier
November 11-19, 2023; reception and sale, Nov. 11, 5-7 p.m.
Legacy Gallery, 7178 E Main Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
(480) 945-1113, www.legacygallery.com
Powered by Froala Editor
