Featured Western Artist
Layfayette Maynard Dixon ( 1875 - 1946 )
Enter the private Maynard Dixon Gallery.
Maynard Dixon'spaintings of Western landscapes and of the American Indians epitomized a land and a people that Americans wanted to romanticize. A self-taught painter, he first visited Utah's Zion canyon in 1938. He immediately fell in love with the area and built a ten-acre summer residence at Mt. Carmel. For the remaining years of his life, Dixon passed his summers at Mt. Carmel and painted the Southern Utah landscape.
Dixon's oeuvre is not stylistically classifiable. His life's works do not fit into one major movement, although they show the influence of the Impressionists, the Modernists, the Cubists, the Realists, and painters of the old West like Frederic Remington. Not always appreciated by the layman, Dixon's approach is appreciated by connoisseurs and artists. He was a social critic and a poet, fearlessly painting commentaries on the plight of the Native American and of victims of the Great Depression and social unrest. He lived among the figures he painted, actually spending time among the Hopi, Blackfoot, and Navajo Indians, and living in undeveloped Western areas like Taos, New Mexico, and Mt. Carmel. His character and his work make him one of the West's greatest painters. Ultimately, Dixon's goal was to touch our human side with his landscapes and scenes of the city. He wanted to allow us to feel. He makes this point in one of his poems, written under his trademark thunderbird signature, "This is my mark, / this is the mark I make / upon your heart." As he once said, "Painting, as I see it, must be human rather than arty--it is a means to an end. It is my way of saying what I want you to comprehend. It is my testimony in regard to life, and therefore I cannot lie in paint." Dixon's style of painting bold masses of color with simplicity of line, led him into mural pianting in which he excelled much of his professional life. In Los Angeles, he did a mural for the new Southwest Museaum founded by Charles Lummis. In 1946 he did sketches for a large mural of the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railway's Los Angeles office. But he died before it was completed and his widow, Edith Hamil along with his friend, Buck Weaver finished it.
Dixon's oeuvre is not stylistically classifiable. His life's works do not fit into one major movement, although they show the influence of the Impressionists, the Modernists, the Cubists, the Realists, and painters of the old West like Frederic Remington. Not always appreciated by the layman, Dixon's approach is appreciated by connoisseurs and artists. He was a social critic and a poet, fearlessly painting commentaries on the plight of the Native American and of victims of the Great Depression and social unrest. He lived among the figures he painted, actually spending time among the Hopi, Blackfoot, and Navajo Indians, and living in undeveloped Western areas like Taos, New Mexico, and Mt. Carmel. His character and his work make him one of the West's greatest painters.
Ultimately, Dixon's goal was to touch our human side with his landscapes and scenes of the city. He wanted to allow us to feel. He makes this point in one of his poems, written under his trademark thunderbird signature, "This is my mark, / this is the mark I make / upon your heart." As he once said, "Painting, as I see it, must be human rather than arty--it is a means to an end. It is my way of saying what I want you to comprehend. It is my testimony in regard to life, and therefore I cannot lie in paint."
Dixon's style of painting bold masses of color with simplicity of line, led him into mural pianting in which he excelled much of his professional life. In Los Angeles, he did a mural for the new Southwest Museaum founded by Charles Lummis. In 1946 he did sketches for a large mural of the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railway's Los Angeles office. But he died before it was completed and his widow, Edith Hamil along with his friend, Buck Weaver finished it.
