Gordon McConnell, Stagecoach Attack, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40"
McConnell is best known as a postmodernist western painter rooted in “the aura of time and distance and nostalgia”, the stillness, memorial, and mourning for dreams of the West. McConell’s shadowy riders are specters, forever fixed astride their plunging steeds, crossing ash-colored, abstract deserts. In the past two years, his work has been included in exhibitions at Stremmel Gallery, Reno; Toucan Gallery, Billings; The Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida; the Belger Arts Center, Kansas City; Visions West Gallery, Denver; Custer County Art and Heritage Center, Miles City, Montana; and the Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C., in an exhibition that traveled to the National Art Gallery, Beijing, and other museums in China.
Born in 1950 in La Junta, Colorado, and raised in rural Southeastern Colorado, Gordon McConnell studied art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (B.A. 1972) and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and art history at the University of Colorado, Boulder (M.A., 1979).
McConnell collects and archives images from western films much the way art historians assemble material for a lecture or publication, or a curator for an exhibition. After all, he was trained as an art historian and worked as a full-time curator for twenty years. The imagery McConnell finds often recalls the paintings and illustrations of Charlie Russell or Frederic Remington, narrative works that have been consulted by generations of western filmmakers, from William S. Hart to Clint Eastwood. Part of McConnell’s interest has been to redirect cinematic compositions into the contemplative sphere of painting.
To view the article “Television West” by Michele Corriel, please see below.
[nggallery id=147]
One Comment