Ridin’ the West: Works by Roy De Forest and Dana Hart-Stone was organized in collaboration with Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco.
Exhibition Dates: July 22 - October 18, 2019
Reception and Artist Talk: October 11, 2019 @ 5pm
Roy De Forest
Roy De Forest (1930-2007) was a famous American artist, whose paintings, drawings, and sculptures depicted figures and animals in folk-like, semi-abstracted landscapes inspired by the American West. His cast of characters, including dogs, horses, birds, and people, are rendered in brilliant colors, textures, and patterns to form a complex swarm of activity and animation in each composition. Recognized as one of the most original painters of his generation, De Forest imbued his works with a charm and lyricism that invite viewers to venture into his imaginative world.
Born in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1930, Roy De Forest received his MA from San Francisco State University and was a member of the illustrious art faculty at UC Davis from 1965 to 1992. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe, and was the subject of a mid-career survey, which originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1974 and traveled to the Fort Worth Art Museum, the Glenbow-Alberta Art Gallery, Calgary, Alberta, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. In 2017, the Oakland Museum of California mounted Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest, the first full career retrospective of the artist’s work. Roy De Forest died in 2007.
Texas, 2002, acrylic/mixed media on canvas and wood, 48" x 42" x 12"
Dana Hart-Stone
Bay Area artist Dana Hart-Stone appropriates vintage vernacular photographs of life in the American west to create intricately patterned works on canvas laced with collective memory and nostalgia. Inspired by his childhood growing up in the badlands of eastern Montana, Hart-Stone’s use of repeated imagery creates the feeling of a cinematic narrative, replete with characters and occurrences of western life. Digitally stitched together into fields of memory, Hart-Stone’s paintings pay homage to the personal histories of everyday people, while simultaneously pointing to the formation of an American identity.
Born in Billings, Dana Hart-Stone attended Montana State University, Bozeman, and University of Montana, Missoula, and received his B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1997. His paintings and commissions can be found in numerous private and public collections, including the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA and the Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA.
Horse of Course, 2016, UV-cured acrylic ink on canvas, 60" x 48"
More info: danahartstone.com