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| Artist CW Mundy |
| PleinAir Magazine’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, will be presented to living legend C.W. Mundy live at next month’s Plein Air Convention & Expo, the largest gathering of plein air painters in the world, to be held in Colorado on May 21-21, 2023.
PleinAir Magazine will do the honors on May 21, during the opening ceremonies at PACE. As a leading plein air and an expressive realist painter, Mundy has been part of the growth of the “Western Art” movement that has enshrined talented artists connected with spirited depictions of the American West. Mundy’s work stretches well beyond those confines, however, given his extensive grounding in classical art history and knowledge gained from studying the work of European masters, old and new.
 C.W. Mundy, Big Horn Mountains, oil, 8×8 inches We recently profiled Mundy with an interview here in Inside Art. Mundy told us that for him, painting is a kind of miracle, in every sense of the word. It’s all about that initial, astonishing act of creation, the charge of seeing something meaningful take shape and form beneath your brush.
“As I learned as a child in kindergarten,” he says, modestly, “making something out of nothing is really cool!” What Mundy makes, of course, is more than cool. His moodier landscapes blend deep dark color, like bow-sweeps from a bass cello, with bright but never glaring high-notes of light, with an ambient modulation of mid-tone colors between. |
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| CW Mundy, “Sunset,” 2018, oil on linen, 12 x 12 in. |
His style has shifted greatly over the course of his career and his oeuvre, which has included still lifes, landscapes, and the portrait, all of which have received acclaim. During one point of his career, he was known for a “marbling” technique; he would use the brush or palette knife to pick up several different colors at a time and apply the unmixed shades to the canvas directly from the tip or side of that single tool (you can see the effect on the rock face in the painting below).
 C.W. Mundy, Shoshone Canyon, West of Cody, oil, 8×8 inches For a sweeping introduction and deep dive to Mundy’s techniques and theories, check out the video Plein Air Collections, ’95 – ’05 on sale here.
PACE Yourself!
 Painters at the first 2022 PACE Paint-Out: Santuario de Chimayó PACE is the largest gathering of plein air artists in the world.
Tickets are still available, both for in-person attendance AND our main-stage virtual ticket.
So if you are able to travel and enjoy making new friends (and possibly getting back in touch with old friends), then click here to get your tickets to the 10th Annual Plein Air Convention & Expo.
See you at PACE! |
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