Top: Tallac Rex; Bottom: Upper Truckee Gambol
It feels like you’re lying on the ground watching clouds swirl above.
The landscape tilts and nature’s intrinsic movement performs in the breeze through trees, in the trickle of the creek and as shadows begin overtaking distant mountain ranges.
Phyllis Shafer’s artwork is transporting — straight to the heart of Nevada’s deserts and Lake Tahoe and California’s valleys.
The plein air and landscape artist’s upcoming exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, “I Only Went Out for a Walk…” journeys through Shafer’s 30-year art career, displaying not only her early and recent work, but showcasing her life’s transformation as an artist and an individual.
“I’m looking back over 30 years and assessing who I am, what I’ve done and what I want to do with the next 30 years,” Shafer said. “I think this is about context, too. The focus of a museum exhibition as inclusive as this brings a very serious and academic exploration, and it’s a different focus on your work.”
The exhibit has taken more than a year of collaboration, discussion and rifling through a garage full of artwork, Shafer said. According to the NMA’s senior curator and deputy director Ann Wolfe, Shafer’s exhibit will feature about 100 paintings that span her entire artistic career, as well as a fully-illustrated book that accompanies the exhibition.
She said Shafer’s quintessential landscapes in her early paintings will demonstrate how an artist’s career evolves over time.
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