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'View From Tres Orejas," 32  X 40 inches, oil on linen

By Chuck Neustifter

One might think of Geoff Parker as a modern extension of an old tradition in American art.  In 1859, Albert Bierstadt accompanied Frederick William Lander’s survey party westward to the Rocky Mountains. In 1871, another Hudson River School painter Thomas Moran—you may have heard of him—took part in a government expedition to record what is now the Yellowstone region. Both of these artist/explorers returned to their East Coast studios with copious drawings and watercolor sketches of this unrecorded landscape.

The monumental, romantic canvases they painted were idealized views of an Eden-like West and historians today describe them as some of the most extraordinarily beautiful hybrids of fact and fiction.  But they also speak to something else:  the link between art and adventure, a theme that appears prominently in a fresh exhibition of works by Parker.

Contrary perhaps to the motivation of Bierstadt, Moran and others who were rewarded for embellishing what they saw, Parker, a contemporary landscape painter who makes his home in Wyoming, believes the real West needs no exaggeration.

“Recent Observations: Paintings by Geoff Parker” features roughly 60 works and will appear at the Simpson Gallagher Gallery in Cody, Wyoming from June 14 through June 28, 2012.  It’s being time to inaugurate the summer, and it’s an event full of inspiring visual surprises.  

What does the quintessential West represent to you: is it the...