Wilson Hurley: Painter of the Big Landscape

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Wilson Hurley: Painter of the Big Landscape

Central panel, “The New Mexico Suite,” by Wilson Hurley, 1992. 16'x16', oil on canvas.
Collection of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

Not too long ago, a friend, an accomplished painter and critic of art, announced that he'd just gotten a new book. “It's the best art book I've ever seen,” he said. The subject: New Mexico artist Wilson Hurley. I've admired Hurley's work over the years, and looking for a gift for my birthday, Trina bought it for me. With gorgeous reproductions and a detailed life story, The Life and Art of Wilson Hurley: Celebrating the Richness of Reality is, indeed, one of the best books I've come across, too.

Wilson Hurley (1924-2008) is perhaps most famous for his large-scale depictions of the West. If you've ever flown into the Albuquerque airport, you might have seen “La Cueva Sunset, East” and "La Cueva Sunset, West." The vast size (63”x135”) of these two paintings brings to the visitor the grandeur of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains. They are impressive, but not his largest paintings.

Hurley attended West Point, flew fighter jets over the Pacific in World War II, got a law degree and then became what he called a “Sunday painter.” But after founding a bank and working as an engineer at Sandia Labs—yes, he was a man of many talents—he went full-time as a painter. The only thing that interrupted his long career as an artist was the Vietnam war, in which he went back into the military as an air traffic controller. When he returned to painting, he found himself painting large-scale commissions such as the five triptychs for the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum: The New Mexico Suite (1992), The California Suite (1993), The Arizona Suite (1994), The Utah Suite (1995) and The Wyoming Suite (1996). As an example of the size of some of his larger pieces, the central panel of The New Mexico Suite alone is 16 feet by 16 feet.

All of this large studio work was based on smaller plein air studies:

His early painting procedures involved making pencil sketches, detailed color notes and photographs. Above all, he relied heavily on his visual memory. … He became convinced that accurate color and values are best determined by painting directly from life. … He saw his own work improve, and he became a relentless advocate that truth in atmospheric perspective, values and color comes from mixing paint and working directly on the studies outdoors.

Hurley is quoted:

"In the field, I first do a few compositional studies in pencil and then go to work directly in oil, mixing my colors in the shadow of my panel, the palette lit by the overhead sky. Mixing color in sunlight is much too bright for control, and mixing under an opaque umbrella or shade causes the palette to be flooded by orange or yellow light that reflects off the surrounding ground.
"The method of painting by overhead sky light seems to give me the freshest color and the best fidelity. When the panels have dried, I lay them flat on my taboret in the studio and touch my mixed color to them until I have a complete match. Then I use these colors to paint the larger painting.”

(As an aside, I've learned over the years that most professional studio landscape painters also paint en plein air; but for them, it's not a “thing” on its own but just part of being a painter. They don't make a big deal of it.)

The book, besides being both biography and catalog, contains sections on Hurley's studio, materials and technique. As a painter, I particularly enjoyed reading these sections. But I will warn you: At 380 pages, this book is heavy, tipping the scale at nearly seven pounds. The only way I could work through it comfortably was while lying on the couch with a pillow supporting it. But I do think that is the way a coffee table art book should be enjoyed, and with a cup of hot tea.

Here's an interview with Hurley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scm1vlp1XWI