Book shows artist’s-eye view of Texas state parks
Proceeds from the book The Art of Texas State Parks benefit the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. Above, Evening, Big Cypress Bayou at Caddo Lake State Park. Art by Billy Hassell.
Read the original at https://greensourcedfw.org/articles/summer-reading-texas-artists-celebrate-state-parks
by Amy Martin – July 23, 2024
When it’s too hot to hike, there are other ways to enjoy a nature break. How about curling up on the couch in air-conditioned comfort and reveling in images of state parks as depicted by 30 renowned Texas artists?
A large, hardback picture book, The Art of Texas State Parks: A Centennial Celebration, 1923–2023 is a journey through the state’s most impressive landscapes and an exploration of artistic creativity. Proceeds from the book benefit the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.
From the first park in 1923, Mother Neff State Park, Texas Parks & Wildlife has grown to 95 sites: 74 state parks, 13 historic sites and eight natural areas, encompassing over 627,000 acres and attracting some nine-million visitors annually.
In the book, tight and creative descriptions by assistant state park director Kevin Good accompany each park entry. The artists provide a short statement with each artwork on what compelled them to turn their talents on that particulate site.
For the Old Tunnel State Park, Janet Eager Krueger cleverly depicts the story of bats emerging at sunset using a dozen separate panels, capturing the event’s fragmented energy and the phantom way the bats disappear into dusk.
While some artists capture their locations with the bright eyes of a new visitor, Krueger brings an intimacy and knowledge of West Texas from her experience as a rancher there. In a densely hued gouache watercolor, she chooses an ocelot’s low perspective of Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park to show the scrub thorn forest as a fierce entangled jungle.
A 180-degree different perspective in David Caton’s expansive Hudson Valley style, though less detailed and reduced to its essentials, is well suited to the vastness of Big Bend Ranch State Park and Davis Mountains State Park.
Hailey E. Herrera’s pointillist watercolor batiks on mulberry paper radiate excellent dynamics and definition, used to terrific effect to capture a sylvan scene at Huntsville State Park and at Mission Tejas State Park where a close-up of graceful dogwood blooms hover over the scene.
North Texas artists get a good amount of page time. The dreamy oil-on-linen painting style of Lubbock-born, Dallas-based David Griffin evokes the morning vibe of Ray Roberts Lake State Park. Rather than focus on the angularity of Mineral Wells State Park, he brings Rembrandt-like drama to In Pursuit of Light which captures a heron taking flight from a dimly lit water nook.
Works by Fort Worth-based Billy Hassell showcase his love of the aquatic with his trademark style at the intersection of realism and abstraction. His oil painting technique possesses startling clarity and brings a bright view to Caddo Lake State Park and Dangerfield State Park. His take on the coastal Powderhorn Ranch State Park, opening in the near future, is absolutely stunning. Hassell is a passionate supporter of the state park system.
The range of works is astounding. Margie Crisp uses an acrylic dry brush on canvas technique in silver tones, rather than the usual hyper-colorful acrylic, to impart a mystical quality to crisply detailed nighthawks soaring over folded ranges at Franklin Mountains State Park.
Jim Stoker contrasts vivid sprigs of colorful wildflowers growing amid muted pink granite walls, taking a unique, intimate view of the epic Enchanted Rock State Park.
Wrapping up the array of artwork is some fine writing, including an essay by book co-editor and legendary land defender Andrew Sansom, which looks back at 50 years of Texas conservation and gives concise direction on where it needs to go next. Art historians William E. and Linda J. Reaves ponder the legacy of painting Texas landscapes, reaching back to the ancient rock art of the TransPecos.
The Meadows Center on Water and the Environment and Texas State University sponsored The Art of Texas State Parks: A Centennial Celebration, 1923–2023. Writers include Kevin Good, Andrew Sansom, Linda J. Reaves, and William E. Reaves Jr.
The book can be purchased on the Bulluck Museum’s Online store or Amazon.
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