Artist Taryn Boals admits to being “forever enamored by the American West,” and is especially moved by the Western landscape and its many animal inhabitants. In a solo show titled Frequencies, and hosted at Gallery Wild in Jackson, Wyoming, Boals presents around 20 paintings that showcase a deep connection to her Western subject matter, while also featuring her distinctive style.
Gallery owner Carrie Wild adds that “Frequenciesis a testament to [Boals’] artistic prowess, capturing the interplay of light and wildlife across diverse landscapes over time…Her Jackson Hole home serves as the perfect crucible for inspiration, adding a personal touch to each masterpiece in this visually stunning collection.”
Winter Visitors #2, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24"
Boals shares that her initial inspiration for the show stemmed from the elk bugling this past fall, near her home in Wyoming. “I sought to capture visually the apparitional quality to sounds that can only be described as sublime,” she says. “I thought of their migratory pathways taken over the centuries and their instinctual rituals—behavior that I found to be simultaneously familiar and comforting, yet strange and transfixing.”
Space & Time, acrylic on canvas, 9 x 12"
She continues, “I found that as I progressed with different subject matter for the show, one word that I felt unified the body of work was ‘frequencies’ used in a number of ways. Whether it was the ghost-like quality within the layers, the sounds that influenced the work, the strong sense of light setting each mood, or the ‘frequents’ that habitually took on ancestral routes time and time again.”
Also important to Boals’ body of work is her use of mark making and her experimentation with layering materials. She looked to the artists who painted in caves thousands of years ago for inspiration. “My mark making is filled with the same energy, carving out images with expressionist angles,” Boals remarks. “There is a raw honesty and it isn’t about perfection. Inadvertently this show tells a lot about who I am as a person. My marks tell stories of anxiety, struggle and awkwardness. But they are counterbalanced with moments of refinement.”
In the Pines, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48"
We see these techniques play out in show pieces like In the Pines, depicting three elk standing together, center stage. “This piece was an experimentation with acrylic, liquid charcoal and charcoal,” the artist explains. “It’s a larger piece and when I’m able to get my whole body into the mark making, I have the most fun. I found it very cathartic and immersive. I was challenged in such a good way by trying to achieve a more sophisticated sense of depth between all three mediums than in previous work.”
The artist tackles another theme in the new work surrounding the dwindling populations of horses and bison. Show piece Space & Time, a loose rendering of bison, is inspired by Ken Burns’ documentary The American Buffalo, about the fluctuation of the bison population in the American West.
We Three (triptych), acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48"
Frequencies opens at Gallery Wild on March 20, with an artist reception on Thursday, March 21, from 5 to 8 p.m. The show will hang through March 30. Boals hopes collectors, when viewing the show, feel “blissfully haunted in the best way.” —
Powered by Froala Editor
