Our Cover Artist
Regular readers will recognize the distinctive style of Victoria Chick on this issue's cover. We profiled the Arenas Valley artist back in July 2006 ("Landing on Her Feet"), and also featured her work on our August 2010 cover. Since we last caught up with her, Chick has embarked on a new series of paintings, exemplified by this month's "Red Cat," in which her signature felines share the canvas with labels representing the Land of Enchantment.
Chick says of this "New Mexico Labels Series," "These paintings represent a new series incorporating my interest in old crate labels from the 1930s and 1940s. The 'labels' are painted on a separate piece of canvas and bonded to the main canvas with acrylic medium. This series gives me a chance to combine techniques and images and solve the problems of fusing disparate images into a cohesive whole."
Chick has also been busy helping to organize this month's Red Dot Studio Tour and Gallery Walk, Oct. 5-8 in the Silver City area (see separate story), which will include her own Cow Trail Art Studio. So she's an especially fitting choice for this issue's cover.
She received her MFA in painting from Kent State University in Ohio, and has won honors at MID-FOUR at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Frisco 100 National Drawing Show, and Emerald City Classic International Competition, in which she was awarded first prize in painting. Among institutions that have invited her to exhibit are the Albrecht-Kemper Museum, Boehm Gallery at Palomar College, and the Oceanside Museum of Art. Solo exhibitions include Founders' Gallery of the University of San Diego, Hendren Gallery at Lindenwood College, as well as solo shows at commercial galleries in Missouri, California and New Mexico. The Birger Sandzen Memorial Art Gallery hosted a two-month solo exhibition of her paintings and monoprints in 2003.
And about those cats… The Cat Writers' Association of America honored Chick with the Kuykendall Image Award for Excellence in Illustration, recognition for "the best cat image published in 1998."
Cow Trail Art Studio is located at 119 Cow Trail in Arenas Valley, www.victoriachick.com. Chick's works are available for sale at JW Art Gallery, 99 Cortez Ave. in Hurley, 537-0330, www.jwartgallery.com.
