Joel Ostlind

February 4 - May 20, 2006

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Wyoming born and self-taught, artist Joel Ostlind says, "I was raised in Wyoming and have chosen . . . to live in this region and work to interpret the things I value here: the light, the land, and the people who move through it."

In this exhibition, Joel Ostlind, the subject is one that the artist knows well: cowboys, horses, and cattle in the open lands of the western landscape. Following in the footsteps of Wyoming's earlier cowboy-turned-artists Hans Kleiber and Bill Gollings, Ostlind draws on his cowboy life experience as the subject of his images.

"I am working through my slice of life savoring the atmospheric volume, watching the light change by the hour, the seasons shift day by day. The fun for me is trying to catch, in two dimensions, enough of what refuses to be caught so that as you stand looking at these images you will remember how the light really is, where the mountains are blue like that, why the songbird sings . . . ."

—Joel Ostlind

Ostlind is a master printmaker who moves fluidly between the intaglio printmaking processes of etching, drypoint, aquatint, sugar lift, and lithography. All of these processes are represented in this exhibition in addition to that of monoprint, a process of applying ink to a flat surface that results in a single, unique print.

Ostlind was born in Casper and lives near Big Horn, Wyoming. He has degrees in Soil Science and Ranch Management, and worked the cow camps in Texas, Wyoming, and Montana. Today, he is a full-time artist. Ostlind was the featured artist of the Coors Western Art Show in (2002, 2005), and had a solo exhibition at the Bradford Brinton Museum in 2004. He is represented by Simpson Gallagher Gallery in Cody.

Joel Ostlind is this exhibition's premier and has been developed for a statewide tour through the UW Art Museum's Regional Touring Exhibition Service.

• Funded in part by the Wyoming Community Foundation, FMC Corporation, and the National Advisory Board of the UW Art Museum.

Images:

Left: Joel Ostlind (American, b. 1954), Rorschach Riders, 1996, 8-7/8 x 11-3/4 inches, sugar lift, 36/96, lent by the artist

Center: Joel Ostlind (American, b. 1954), Over the Hill, 1995, 5-3/4 x 7-7/8 inches, drypoint, 25/28, lent by the artist

Right: Joel Ostlind (American, b. 1954), Morning Light, 1997, 7-7/8 x 9-13/16 inches, aquatint, 93/96, lent by the artist