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Andy Taylor and Dan Young are local landscape artists who have been painting the Roaring Fork Valley for decades. But as much as the two have in common, the artists have their own styles on display at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt.
Their exhibition, “Andy Taylor and Dan Young: Perspectives,” opens on Friday with an artist reception from 5–7 p.m. and will be on view through July 25.
The exhibition features more than 30 large-scale paintings, plein air studies, and oil pastel studies from the artists.
“Dan Young and Andy Taylor have been represented by this same gallery since 1993, from the The Basalt Gallery to Ann Korologos Gallery, which is quite rare in the art world and speaks to their evolution, freshness, and talent,” said Sue Edmonds, director of Ann Korologos Gallery, renamed in 2007 under the leadership of Ann Korologos. “Each has studied and painted Colorado landscapes for many decades, and each brings his own perspective to what he sees, what he notices, how it makes him feel, and how that feeling is depicted with abstract qualities.”
Carbondale-based painter Taylor has been painting the lower valley and the 200 or 300 miles west of the valley for more than 50 years.
Originally from southwestern Pennsylvania, he said he grew up drawing and painting and that he developed a love of the West from spending summers working on a ranch in Montana while in high school. This influenced his decision to attend Colorado College in Colorado Springs, which eventually led him here.
Throughout the years he has developed a “colorful, gestural style” that conveys the mood of a landscape and reflects the emotions evoked by a moment witnessed.
He typically starts his process by paying attention to fleeting moments that arrive with the dramatic change of seasons we experience in Colorado and has spoken about his passion for what he calls “insignificant scenes.”
“The ‘insignificant’ scenes or unfamiliar scenes can be as rich, as important, as intriguing as those epic, iconic, and monumental places that surround us,” said Taylor. “I like the discovery of finding the beauty or interest in otherwise unnoticed places. In the Roaring Fork Valley, I have found lots of places that are wonderful, unusual, untypical. I can almost always find something to draw anywhere if I just slow down and take the time.”
With pen and ink sketches with marginalia, a process he considers to be the bones of a painting and a form of meditation, he studies what he finds to be important about a scene: light, color, composition. His sketches are visual reminders of a scene but are always left incomplete, leaving room within the process to “invent significance and freedom to make discoveries” as he paints in his Carbondale studio.
“Even though I have always done painting and drawing, I am always working on learning and perfecting the craft of making art — the mechanics of it,” he said. “The challenge is maintaining and nurturing my individual vision or idea of what art can be. I have tried to simplify what’s in front me. However, I hope that the ongoing act of putting paint to canvas has made the work better throughout the years.”
Dan Young is a plein air impressionist painter and native of the Roaring Fork Valley. He has mastered the challenges posed by painting on location regardless of the season, earning a reputation as one of Colorado’s premier landscape artists.
Young, who grew up in Glenwood Springs and now lives in Silt, says he was a kid who always enjoyed art but believes it was hard work that got him to where he is today.
After a failed stint at automotive school after high school, he moved back to Colorado and went to art school in Denver, focusing on illustration, which led him into a commercial art career for many years. Eventually, he realized all he really wanted to do was be a painter, so he gave up his corporate job and has been pursuing it since 1989.
These days, he spends his time roaming over familiar terrain, lately a private, secluded property close to home, challenging himself to look deeper at the landscapes and wildlife he encounters. He finds joy in discovering new subject matter in familiar surroundings and said he never gets bored no matter how often he’s visited a place.
“When I found this piece of property, I mean, the Colorado River runs through it. It runs east and west so you get sunrises, you get sunsets, it’s got old growth cottonwoods irrigation ditches you know, feel the stuff I love to paint,” said Young.
Quick sketches allow the artist to organize the landscape, translating the design from his mind’s eye to two dimensions, with plenty of artistic license taken along the way. With the composition sketched out as a loose guide, he then paints en plein air, study after study, sunrise after sunrise, working through themes and ideas to develop onto a larger canvas back in his Colorado studio.
“There’s always danger when you become, I’ll use the word ‘locally famous,’” he said. “You paint one particular thing, and you can make a nice living, but no one knows who you are except in a small geographical area. Well, if suddenly that venue goes away. It’s like starting over. The best stuff I do is the stuff I know, my backyard if you will, because I have a connection and understanding for it. I have spent so many hours in the field whether I’m painting or drawing, just observing or photographing. I know what goes on when, where how it may not be great here today but tomorrow when that sun comes up and this light is reversed this is going to be a killer painting. So you paint what you know, what you understand. And I will never get bored with it. I mean people ask me that you run out of stuff to paint. No.”
He credits the Korologos Gallery, and The Basalt Gallery before that, for really representing and supporting his career as a local artist throughout the years admitting “my local gallery is my bread-and-butter gallery; it’s so important to have that support.”
He admits the new show will be bittersweet without his friend, collaborator, and the galleries namesake, Ann Korologos, who passed away earlier this year.
“This is a tough one. I have done a lot of shows at that gallery over the past 29 years,” he said with emotion in his voice. “The passing of Ann was, to be honest with you, I still don’t know if I have processed that. She was a force. There’s no doubt about it. We were at each other all the time and in a good way because Ann was very set in her ways. I tend to be that way, so we had we had a love-hate relationship. The real goal for me was to do a show that she would say, ‘Oh, you’re getting better.’ That’s all I could really hope for. She was very responsible for where I am today.”
“Andy Taylor and Dan Young: Perspectives” is on view July 7-25 at Ann Korologos Gallery, located at 211 Midland Avenue in Basalt and virtually at korologosgallery.com. To contact Ann Korologos Gallery with questions or comments, please email art@korologosgallery.com or call (970) 927-9668.
