Willard Midgette’s wall-sized painting, *Processing Sheep, at The Phoenix Art Museum reminded me of a painting Byron made while he was living in Casablanca, Morocco. In Byron’s painting two men butcher a goat behind a larger image of a young girl standing in the foreground, staring. Partly I liked Byron’s painting (which I believe recently became fuel at the bonfire party) because of the unusual subject matter. And I was initially interested in Midgette’s painting because of the similar subject. Now that I have read something about Willard Midgette, I am both fascinated, and unable to find a copyright free image of that painting online. But, I read an interesting excerpt about Willard Midgette taken from Ann McGerell and Sally Anderson’s book, The Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program: An Anecdotal History.
In some of his paintings, Willard Midgette included both a still image and the living, moving world around that image. For example, “Sitting Bull Returns” – at the Drive-In, 1976 (Smithsonian), and Pow-Wow, on view at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico.
Pow-Wow Willard Midgette
I know a man who traveled overseas to Madrid, Spain simply to view his favorite painting,
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, Museo del Prado (Madrid)
The Twentieth Century Christian writer, Henri Nouwen traveled to Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia to study his favorite painting, Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt.
I liked reading about Willard Midgette in New Mexico, https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0826341667. His painting in the Phoenix Art Museum is visually intriguing; the subject matter is unusual. Even online, the ether somehow disappears between his work and the viewer. I would like to see more of Willard Midgette’s paintings. It looks to me like it’s worth a trip to Roswell for a look at Pow-Wow.
Nobody wants to be remembered by the sadness that surrounds them.
*available on flickr.
Art - As I See It 