05 Mar WESTERN SURREALISM

Painter Kevin Chupik combines the iconic past with concerns of contemporary thought. His paintings — scenarios, really — capture a sense of the unexpected. Most of all, his work discusses the conundrum of knowing and living in the West today.

Shadow Boxer | Acrylic on Birch | 36 x 48 inches | 2024

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Chupik understands the region in ways other people never will. “Going down a dirt road can unlock so many things for me,” he says. “Maps, geology, anthropology, history, I take that back to my studio and compile it. And the storytelling … all these are at play when I put together these images.”

In his piece On Empty, a chaps-clad cowboy stands on a barren road, the sky cloudless, the landscape flat and distant. The back of a large sign that reads “SAG,” or gas backward, obstructs his view. The painting speaks to land use in the West and the draining of natural resources in a powerful, poetic setting that’s both quiet and raging.

On Empty | Acrylic on Birch | 48 x 84 inches | 2023

“My paintings are derived from a combination of cowboy imagery that I’ve lived with since childhood,” Chupik says. “Everywhere I’ve lived has been all about the land and ranching and desert — which is all part of the experience.”

On the other side of that, he was trained as a contemporary artist in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied abstract art at the University of Colorado, earning a Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing.

Finding inspiration from artists like Surrealist René Magritte and Modernist Edward Hopper, Chupik starts from the point of nostalgia and elevates his work with a conceptual aspect. The artist says that vintage photographs provide a “compelling trail to follow in a more contemporary setting. Something that lifts from a predictable context and moves towards something fresher. Humor, tongue in cheek, wittiness, it’s not an equation. I’m just finding a new aspect.”

In Stampede, a cowboy on horseback, lasso in hand, corrals a herd of 1960s automobiles. The lasso circles above a cloudless horizon as the driverless cars push and shove into some kind of order. You can almost hear the mooing of the horns. One lone cowboy and so many cars. Taken as a whole, his body of work presents as vignettes, which is how Chupik thinks about it; he wants to construct a scene.

“The isolation part, the onlooker, the voyeur being allowed access to a moment, I like that idea in terms of the desert,” the painter says. “These powerful moments when you are alone, and your senses are heightened. I often pose my figures in such a way that they’re looking away, being reflective. That’s what I like about Magritte … his intellect. Hopper has this Western-quiet intensity of revealing that glimpse of a moment.”

Thirty years ago, Chupik’s life took a drastic turn. While guiding a mountain bike tour, he fell from a cliff and was paralyzed. Suddenly, he faced a different future than the one he’d imagined. “It was a blessing and curse at the same time. I wanted to think about my passions, but it was too painful, so I reinvented myself. In 2014, I decided to make the work I was passionate about, not to catch eyes, but to tune into what was valuable in my experience.”

The Storyteller | Acrylic on Birch | 36 x 54 inches | 2024

That’s when he thought about the Western image —icons from movies and car trips as a kid, old gas stations and curio shops, things that are gone now. But Chupik’s nostalgia is separate from the touristy kind. His point of view examines the mythology of the Old West as well as his life experiences to create new, compelling perspectives.

“The cowboy is a symbol of a dead or dying pursuit,” Chupik says. “He’s pitted against the elements; it’s accessible, but it’s more than that. Some of [my paintings] are very direct from my life, and some are indirect. I want to continue to see how much is left — the premise of mining something compelling or fresh. Rediscovering something lost. I mine or uncover the experiences I’ve had or [would have] liked to have had. The vision of possibility. I’m living through my art, going back in time, all wound up into this thing called the American Southwest.”

Mark Sublette, owner of the Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, has known Chupik for a long time. “It’s an original voice of how he sees the West,” Sublette says. “There’s a sense of humor as well. We know those days don’t really exist, but here’s how he sees it through his own lens.”

Each canvas shares a story, the gallerist adds. “I have one I own of a guy on a ’62 Chevy, a cowboy, just contemplating. [And I wonder,] ‘What is he thinking about?’… Chupik allows the viewer to make his own story. As an artist, you want people to look at the work and put themselves into the work; that’s a successful painting.”

Sublette sees Chupik tapping into a deep sense of what it means to be someone who grew up in the West with complexities that are often glazed over in popular culture. “A Chupik painting is not just a face-value piece,” Sublette says. “There’s a thread of humor, loneliness, inspiration, longing, sadness, all those things. I respond to those paintings, and other people do as well. He’s got his own voice, [and he’s] not trying to imitate anyone. [It’s] a real voice that has something to say. There’s so much subject matter out there, so much … too much to cover in one lifetime. Each piece is its own encapsulated story.”

By constructing a painting the way a director might frame a scene, Chupik can pull threads from reality and his own imagination. “The conceptual mind must bridge the gap between reality and dream,” Chupik says. “Not solely using imagination but marshaling the components of a known world to form a new one.”

Nighthawk | Acrylic on Birch | 24 x 30 inches | 2023

In many ways, Chupik broke the rules. He stopped working with galleries two years ago and sells his work directly to collectors, either as original paintings or prints. “I make concepts, and I know there will be a buyer before even picking up a brush,” he says. “People get ahold of me through Instagram and my website. It’s been a great tool.”

Which doesn’t mean his work cannot be seen.

During school, when Chupik visited museums, his dream of being on the walls of those museums took hold. In 2024, Seth Hopkins from the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, purchased a piece for their permanent collection. This year, the director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, visited Chupik’s studio, which is usually a preamble to adding a painting to their collection.

Fly Away | Acrylic on Birch | 36 x 48 inches | 2024

Excited to display Chupik’s work at the Booth Western Art Museum, Hopkins notes how clean and contemporary it is while trading on the nostalgia of the silver screen. His 2023 painting Desert Ratio hangs next to works by Theodore Waddell and Gordon McConnell.

“His art is very introspective, something different for Western art. It’s lyrical work,” Hopkins says.

The Booth Museum seeks primarily to collect living artists working in both traditional and contemporary styles in the Western genre. “There’s this surge of interest in [Chupik’s] work,” Hopkins concludes. “Hopefully, from his standpoint, there’s a way for him to continue to grow an audience as we broaden the definition of what is Western art.”