Mark Keathley

Mark Keathley

“The Sabinal Starts Here”

Written by: Gabriel Diego Delgado

Art Consultant 

JR Mooney Galleries

Known more as a nostalgic landscape and scenery painter, Mark has done some amazing work painting and illustrating the Native Americans, Old West, Texas Wildlife as well as an abundance of other subjects and genres.  However, one of his newest acquisitions at J.R. Mooney Galleries is a small 6” x 8” gem titled “The Sabinal Starts Here”.  This shallow riverbed stretches out from the foreground to the background, drawing the viewers’ eye into the artwork.  The mouth of the river dominates the lower horizontal linear space.  Mixing a cool blue palette on the right side and contrasting that with a warmer orange and green mixture on the left, Mark lays out a simple composition and color scheme. Deliberate is his decision to plant a brownish cotton tail grass in the middle of the river; anchoring the compositional elements around it. The far left side is dominated by heavy underbrush and green coniferous trees. Playing on dichotomies, the right side is subjugated by a receded riverbank, exposing the sun bleached sandy beach of a dried out Texas landscape. Barren trees are dotted along the banks, revealing a timberline that draws the boundary before an unmanageable thicket. A cliffside, rolling hills and mountains peek out in the background laying claim to the ever-expanding Texas Landscape.

"The Sabinal Starts Here"

Dalhart Windberg, "Yucca Cactus"
By: Gabriel Diego Delgado
Art Consultant
J R Mooney Galleries

..."This horizontal painting by the world renowned Dalhart Windberg, is a 60’s throwback to a time of a palated aesthetic. This orange, garish, and post-apocalyptic landscape is complete with barren branches of broken vegetation that references the Pencil (stick) cactus; bookending a vital cactus patch.  Approaching such a diminishing acute angle, the flowered cactus in the foreground start at a higher depth at the left side, diminishing in perspective or measurable volume as the painting reads left to right. The viewer’s connection breaks at a cluster of spiky Yucca cactus on the right; a dark and shadow ridden vegetation that caters to the brazen fire-burning skyline of insidious haze.  Windberg’s palette knife strokes make for choppy and slanted textures on the rocks and stones. Although this creates a somewhat muddy color field; the application works w
ith the motifed application of knife and brush- such is the example of the cactus themselves.  Usually Windberg pays careful attention to shadows, light, color, and values, but in “Yucca Cactus” his play on shade turns to gloom as he investigates the “un-penetrate-able” crevices that lurk in the midst of such undergrowth.  Unusual in his decision to add such a secondary color as the main hue, this painting is a gem, unique to his roster of paintings and surely a collector’s item in its own integrity."

JR Mooney Galleries
8302 Broadway
San Antonio, TX
210.828.8214

www.jrmooneygalleries.com