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In his 5th solo exhibition at the Robischon Gallery, Colorado painter Don Stinson explores
the
cultural landscape of the West including historically important Earthwork projects from
the late
1960's and 70's and the terrain that inspired them.
Known for his Western panoramic vistas, Don Stinson's latest series includes numerous
small-
scale watercolors as well as grand-scale oil on canvas works. Traveling between
Denver and Los
Angeles, Stinson located and selected his subjects to contrast the idealized images of
the West
inherited from the 19th century; depicting the evolutionary shifts in both landscape and
culture. The watercolor images of roadside structures such as an abandoned drive-in
theater, gas
station and other modern ruins are viewed along side the artist's large oils;
reinterpretations
of three famous projects from the Earthwork art movement.
The site-specific artworks of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels
and
Michael Heizer's Double Negative, raise complex questions for the viewer and are
intriguing in a
completely unique way in Stinson's paintings. He writes, "In the winter of 2003, the
drought had
caused the Great Salt Lake to fall to the lowest levels in recent decades. On the lake's
northern
shore, the land art project, "Spiral Jetty", built by Robert Smithson in 1970, became
visible again.
Before I drove out to see the project, I had known the site only from photographs taken
in the
seventies. "Spiral Jetty" was built of granite boulders and earth pushed out and
dropped into the
pink, brine-tinged water of the lake using bulldozers and dump trucks. Just a few miles
past the
site is where immigrant laborers brought together the first transcontinental railroad, with
hammers, spikes, pick axes and shovels at Promontory Point. Smithson wrote of "Spiral Jetty"
as
reclamation of a ruined industrial site. When I got there, I found the art itself in a state of
elegant
ruin, the granite rocks encrusted in foot-thick salt caps and barely protruding from the surface of
the lake."
Stinson, like his 19th century predecessors, landscape masters Bierstadt and Moran, and his 20th
century progressives, Smithson, Holt and Heizer, is compelled to address the spaciousness of the
Western landscape. In this exhibition, Stinson acknowledges art history while he brings vast
space back to human scale; at the same time, he discovers new ways to think about art and culture
in the West.
Biography
Colorado artist Don Stinson received his M.F.A. from Tufts University/School of the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts and his B.F.A. from Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
Colorado. His extensive solo and group exhibitions include numerous showings at Robischon Gallery,
Denver, Colorado, Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WY, Frick Gallery, Belfast, Maine,
and Artist Space, New York. His collections include the Denver Art Museum and the Art in
Embassies Program, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
updated 03-16-09
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