When I told my sister I was interviewing an artist whose work was featured on Yellowstone,she interjected, “Oh, I know which one,” before I even described it. The scene takes place in the fifth season’s 11th episode. Monica and Kacey Dutton settle into their new house and have differing opinions on what constitutes as straight. “You have fallen on your head too many times, baby,” Monica says with a smirk, adjusting the freshly hung painting again.
Women Through Tangerine Sky, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in.
The work: Prairie Trail by Chloé Marie, a French artist who has painted under several monikers (Chloé Marie Gaillard, C.M. Burk, Maison CM). In it, her signature horses romp in swirling grassland with a style that nods to outsider art traditions from Native America and around the world.
Chloé Marie knew the painting would be on the show (it had been in the background of several episodes before). Its centrality to the script, however, came as a total surprise. “In my mind, I’m thinking a little zoom,” Chloé Marie says. “You know, when they leave a scene in a movie and they stay on a picture for a little while,” she continues. “I mean, I don’t cry easily, but I teared up because it wasn’t just the scene, it was the effort put into showing my work that really moved me.”
Impromptu Dance, oil on linen, 16 x 20 in.
Thanks to Yellowstone director Christina Alexandra Voros, a longtime supporter of Chloé Marie’s work, around 13 million viewers suddenly knew who she was. Or at least engaged with her painting longer than most museum visitors would. Much like the Oprah effect from a generation earlier, the Yellowstone effect bolstered interest in Chloé Marie’s work and sales of Prairie Trail prints surged.
Voros’ generosity, more than the recognition, was what really moved her, says Chloé Marie. “The fact that she and Taylor Sheridan made such an effort around my work to be shown in that way in the series—I still get chills just talking about it.”
First introduced to the Yellowstone team by Beth Dutton actress Kelly Reilly, Chloé Marie later connected with Voros online. I was selling my first barrel horse, a palomino,” Chloé Marie remembers. The horse was “a bit of a handful” and a “turd” that needed to be ridden daily, so the artist thought it wasn’t a great match for Voros, who was busy on the road with Yellowstone, Lawmen: Bass Reeves and 1883.
The two kept in contact, and Voros became one of Chloé Marie’s biggest advocates, adding work to her personal collection and commissioning portraits as gifts for the Bass Reeves cast, Voros says. Their relationship has become “one of the great artist friendships in my life,” says Voros.
Chloé Marie in her studio.
Originally from rural France, Chloé Marie’s creative journey has been a winding one. She worked at Christian Dior during the John Galliano years. Modeled for major brands. Lived in London, Paris and New York. But as the daughter of a farrier and retired jockey—“just a girl from the countryside”—big cities were never a perfect fit. “I could not deal with New York anymore,” she says. “It was never for me, but it was a great experience. I’m really glad I did it.” After a quick stint in Austin, Texas, which also felt too urban to call home, Chloé Marie landed in Taos, New Mexico. “And that’s where my Western art career really started,” she says.
“Instantaneously, we were friends,” Parsons Gallery of the West director Ashley Rolshoven Loveless says. The two bonded over horsemanship, and Loveless, a barrel racer, took Chloé Marie to one of her events.
Taking Flight, oil, 18 x 24 in.
“Next time I’ll be competing with you because I’m not gonna sit on the bleachers just watching you having fun like that,” Chloé Marie remembers. The following year, the newly minted French cowgirl—who grew up in the hunter jumper arena—was running barrels, too. “She is the one who put me back in the saddle,” says Chloé Marie.
Known for their focus on painters carrying the torch of the Taos Society of Artists and early New Mexico modernists, Loveless and Parsons took a chance on an unknown expat who—in addition to putting up some respectable times—was falling in love with the art of the American West. The gallery started showing Chloé Marie’s work in 2018 and “it’s been kind of a partnership, per se, since the beginning,” Loveless says.
Red Blanket, oil, 20 x 16 in.
First inspired by the dynamic action in Frederic Remington paintings and her own years on high-flying horses, Chloé Marie started hanging out at Parsons, soaking up the work of other Western art masters like Barbara Latham and Dorothy Brett. “I think Chloé, in particular, was drawn to their artwork starting out in folk art and then kind of taking her own spin on it,” says Loveless. “Being in Taos, I was really immersed in that,” Chloé Marie says, calling Loveless “a key founder” of her start as a Western artist. Today Chloé Marie is one of the gallery’s top-selling artists by volume, Loveless says.
Frequently featuring horses and figures wrapped in colorful blankets, Chloé Marie’s paintings might call to mind ledger art or Dorothy Dunn’s influence on artists of the Santa Fe Indian School. This graphic, simplified approach came out of European folk art and sporting scenes, the artist explains. Echoing a textile repeat or the naïve, energetic markmaking of a kid illustrating their own story, Chloé Marie’s drawings and paintings are immediate, delightfully design-forward, and don’t seem to take themselves too seriously.
“She has a very distinctive, identifiable style as she traverses form and medium,” says Voros, who collects the artist’s studies and fully realized work. “It’s timeless and fresh in the boldness as she creates shapes…there’s something kinetic to it, even in its simplicity of shapes.” she continues. “You can’t teach that.”
Four Corners, oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
Last fall Chloé Marie took part in Far West, an ensemble show in New York City curated by Mark Maggiori and his wife Petecia Lefawnhawk—a couple she says is “blazing a trail” and “focused on the future of artists” with their pop-up exhibitions. “We always loved what she’s doing because she has a complete different approach than mine,” says Maggiori. “The common thing is that she has really embraced the West from day one when she started to settle here. She’s the real deal.”
Living in Texas and New Mexico and on a Montana ranch once occupied by Charlie Russell, Chloé Marie has soaked up the American West and made it her own. Between shows at Parsons (Young West on view through June 16; Big Group Show in August) and a second iteration of Far West in Austin this September, Chloé Marie is returning to France and exploring themes close to her heart.
“I feel like my roots are really calling,” she says, hoping to pick up on equestrian and hunting themes that her grandmother, also a painter, once portrayed. “A lot of the Taos Society of Artists, those guys started with this. They were painting sports paintings, and I’m doing it the other way around because I started with Western paintings and now I’m going home.”
Crisp Start to the Day, oil on linen, 16 x 20 in.
“I think the fact that we have an outsider look, but then we are also now living in it, makes the perfect combo to actually bring something new. I think that’s what happened for me. And that’s what’s happening for Chloé,” Maggiori says. “It’s always good to have a larger view,” he continues, noting a parallel with European artists first traveling west 150 years ago.
For Chloé Marie, “taking off to America” was an adventure “punctuated by so many unexpected blessings” and a few regrettable tattoos. She has lived half her life in America now and draws equal inspiration from American and European cultures. “I feel like there’s a connection between the two and it really defines me as a person,” she says.
“I’m just grateful for my story because I definitely did not take the easy route. I complicated things for myself many times, but it resulted in a lot of fun experiences,” she says. “I’ve had so many lives already.” —
See More:
www.cmburkwesternart.com
www.parsonsart.com/parsonswest
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