Helen Keller once wrote “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” For Wendell Locke Field, daring adventures and earnest artistry are one and the same. Field's charmed paintings take viewers through Wyoming's Teton Valley and beyond, telling stories of our collective grace. View the exhibition online.
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Generations of artists have tried their hand at capturing the grandeur and beauty of the Tetons, resulting in iconic artworks that continue to inspire us today. For Kelly, WY based painter Wendell Locke Field, the Tetons are not the only source of awe around here; these majestic mountains serve as the backdrop to lives lived. A new exhibition at Shari Brownfield Fine Art titled Collective Grace showcases Field’s uniquely intimate and charming pieces of visual storytelling, highlighting the grace and humanity that he has experienced in our valley and around the globe.
Since his childhood living on a dairy farm in Michigan, Field has cherished the natural world and the adventure it holds. The farm soil, forest trees, and lake waters fostered Field's curiosity for nature, and he felt that the entire universe was present in even the smallest leaf or stone. His curiosity developed alongside a deep creativity, spurring him to translate the sights and textures of the outside world through painting. Eventually, Field came to understand that painting was not merely a way to capture his own past and present, it was also a way to imagine and create his own future. He came to adopt a motto written by Henry David Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”
Field’s paintings reveal a deep love for the tradition of painting blended with a hunger for new experience and adventure. “I studied those who came before me and those who stand beside me. I study the craft and practice the fundamentals, Drawing is seeing after all. You are forced to be still. To be.” says Field of his approach to painting. What Field sees, of course, is not just the beauty of mountains - but of the people, objects, structures and even trinkets that come to ‘be’ with these mountains too. It is this collective grace that inspires his work.
Collective Grace opens March 3, 2022 and will remain on view through April 30th, 2022. An opening reception with the artist will be held March 17th from 4-7pm.