"The more and more we're screwing up our planet, the more and more important those places feel," he says. Much as members of the Dallas Nine responded in part to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Bacon says concerns about global warming, industrial encroachment and pollution have informed his choice of places to paint. The longest piece in the show, 114 West, measures 13 by 100 inches.Īlthough realistically painted, Bacon's scenes of rural areas, small towns, highways and railroad tracks have a rich physicality and a palette just otherworldly enough to evoke a mysterious mood.īacon says Bywaters and Dozier influenced his subject matter, while his painting technique is inspired by Spruce and Jim Woodson, Bacon's teacher at Texas Christian University, where Bacon earned his master's degree in 2007. "They did well, and (Dike) said, 'Well, there is a connection here, so let's try it,' " Bacon says.īacon paints West Texas vistas, often in a panoramic format that captures a sense of space and lends a cinematic quality to his paintings. However, Dike agreed to put a couple of Bacon's pieces in his annual auction. "(Dike) said, 'Well, the only problem is, you're still alive,' " Bacon says. The Fort Worth-based Bacon says he approached Dike about representation six years ago because he was influenced by some of the artists Dike shows. Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, William Lester, Everett Spruce and others "loved to go out and capture scenes of Texas - what they were familiar with," says David Dike, owner of David Dike Fine Art in Dallas, which specializes in late-19th- and early-20th-century art but also represents Bacon, Flaming and Young.
Reaves relates the work of contemporary regionalists Randy Bacon, Jon Flaming and William Young - three of the painters in the show - to that of several members of the Dallas Nine, a group of artists in the 1930s and 1940s who drew inspiration from the land and inhabitants of the Southwest. "There's a lot of fun and interest, we think, in looking at art from that perspective and trying to glean over time what makes Texas art 'Texas' by something other than just proximity."Ī connection to landscape is the most common thread. Reaves is also using the show "to say that there are styles and there are themes that seem to be associated with Texas art and artists over time. "What we're doing is trying to show the continuum and the influence of earlier artists that you can discover in contemporary work," says gallery owner Bill Reaves of The Texas Aesthetic: Tracing Traditions of Subject and Style in Contemporary Texas Painting. But the six painters on view in Reaves' latest show are contemporary artists described as "rising stars on the Texas art scene" in a booklet accompanying the exhibition.
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