SANTA FE, NM.- Artist, rancher and storyteller, Theodore Waddell, is one of the West’s most celebrated and recognized contemporary artists. His signature style of bold brushstrokes, textures, and generous layers of impasto capture the beauty and harshness of ranch life in the high plains and mountain valleys of the Rocky Mountains. The paintings in this exhibition are grounded in Ted’s profound and inextricable connection to the land and animals he loves. Western art is often characterized as nostalgia. Waddell’s paintings are much more about the contemporary West and his immediate experience as a rancher.

Living in Montana is not merely existing; it is a vital experience. It is difficult to survive here, requiring a special kind of person. The weather, isolation, and geography are tough, individual, and independent. My art’s all part of the process of living on a ranch. You farm the ground and it’s one thing; then you look at it and it’s something else visually. — Ted Waddell

Opening his first gallery location in Santa Fe during the early 1970s, Gerald Peters has always embraced an unconventional approach. Presenting a diverse range of stylistic and aesthetic movements as well as historic periods, the Santa Fe gallery showed established artists and artworks alongside many lesser known, more esoteric works. In 1976, Peters became Georgia O’Keeffe’s exclusive dealer, representing the artist until her death in 1986; a relationship that cemented both the gallery’s position in Santa Fe’s art ecosystem and as a leading dealer of Modernist works.

Expanding the gallery’s presence to New York in the 1990s, Peters continued to build the breadth and range of the gallery’s program, bringing forward a comprehensive sculpture department to show in tandem with two-dimensional works. The sculpture program included American Neoclassical works by canonical artists like Hiram Powers, as well as those sculptors who, until very recently, were largely unrecognized, like Edmonia Lewis. Iconic sculpture of the Western canon and Modernist works by Paul Manship, Gaston Lachaise and William Zorach were also central to the gallery?s sculpture focus.

Gerald Peters Gallery
Theodore Waddell
September 29th, 2023 - November 30th, 2023