JAMES ERWIN BOREN (American, 1921-1990). Horses in the Shade, 1971. Watercolor on paper. 27 x 35 inches (68.6 x 88.9 cm)...

Description

JAMES ERWIN BOREN (American, 1921-1990)
Horses in the Shade, 1971
Watercolor on paper
27 x 35 inches (68.6 x 88.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: James Boren / 1971 CA

James Boren was one of the deans of modern western painters in Texas. Born in Waxahachie, Boren began his career in art as a teacher following his service in the Marines. He was the first art director at the newly established National Cowboy Hall of Fame (now the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum) in Oklahoma City in 1965. Shortly afterward he was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America and became one of its most celebrated and honored members. In the late 1960s, he and fellow CAA member Melvin Warren, both established homes and studios in the small central Texas town of Clifton and helped turn that city into something of a western artists' colony.

Boren received formal art training at the Kansas City Art Institute and graduated with a master of fine arts degree in 1951. He taught art for two years at St. Mary's college in Leavenworth, Kansas, and followed that with a nine year stint as an illustrator for Martin-Marietta Company. He said that both of those experiences, as a teacher and illustrator, helped him develop the discipline needed to pursue a career as a painter. He said, "Good drawing, good color, an understanding of the basic design and elements such as form, pattern, value, line, and texture are essential to producing good art. This is the foundation on which an artist should build."

Although Boren painted many images of the historic and contemporary West, he was most at ease painting the land and people that he encountered on a daily basis around his Clifton home. As in Horses in the Shade, he frequently chose to portray the quieter and more serene elements of the West and Texas, concentrating on creating paintings that were rich in color, light, and the subtle nuances of the landscape. His preferred media was watercolor. He said, "It offers the greatest spontaneity of expression of any painting medium and lends itself to beautiful transparent passages or to completely opaque gouache techniques, or a combination of the two." Horses in the Shade amply illustrates his watercolor technique. Here he achieves the spontaneity he spoke of with a quiet scene that gives the viewer the sensation of having just arrived on the spot. Boren was adept at placing the viewer at a vantage point where he can easily place himself in the context of the scene presented.


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