Things are out of whack, it seemed so all winter and spring for Duke Beardsley. But instead of recoiling, he’s welcoming discord in his new work.
“The cosmos is kicking our butts,” he says. “There is something in the universe right now that is beautifully, strangely, confusingly dissonant.”
Instead of cowering, he’s patiently reacting: “I’m going back to the most stable iconography I know—the working cowboys and cowgirls,” to see what they have to say about all this. Turns out, they’ve got lots of thoughts on the matter. The starting point of this new series— a painting called “Sneaky Jake”—silhouettes a russet-brown cowboy mounting his horse against a marigold expanse, their outline emblazoned in turquoise. “This painting, in particular, has been fascinating. It’s made me ask myself, ‘Where did my confidence go?’ There is a tremendous amount of discomfort and distrust around me, within me. I want that confidence back and that’s why I’m pushing the envelope.”
