William Matthews: Decades

William Matthews: Decades

On view through October 20, 2024
Bilingual Exhibit | Exposición Bilingüe

Colorado-based artist William Matthews has had a long and prolific career spanning five decades. Best known for depicting the remote landscapes and portraits of people inhabiting the American West, Matthews has designed albums, painted book covers, traveled the world, and documented it in his watercolor paintings.

A turning point happened in 1985 when he attended the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. He encountered the Great Basin region’s cowboys from Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, and California. They became the subjects of his paintings that reveal new narratives about today’s working cowboys in the West. Matthews’ paintings and murals also appear in the halls of Congress and internationally on the walls of three continents.

This major exhibition brings together Matthews’ most prolific plein-air watercolors. The show will also include his other mediums, such as album covers, murals, and ephemera, that pay tribute to his prominent presence in the international art world.

William Matthews, Randy Stowell, Watercolor, Collection of the Artist