The icons of Paul Milosevich's Southwest are indeed out of the ordinary. Under his extraordinary eye and hand, the workworn objects and everyday heroes of his beloved landscape become objects of uncritical devotion.
In this thirty-year retrospective,
Elizabeth Skidmore Sasser traces the various themes of Milosevich's work, providing fascinating biographical insights into the artist's unfoldment, and to the development of West Texas Realism.
"Realism is painting an old shoe instead of painting the Grand Canyon," says Milosevich. And whether that old shoe is one of the boots in his still life 'Wine, Women, and Song" or on the foot of a local legend, the "text" that Milosevich paints is a full-length novel, worth savoring again and again.
"This book of paintings by Paul Milosevich is not only a thirty -year retrospective of a highly original artist, but a visual history of his life and hometown of Trinidad, Colorado.
"Here are paintings of his family members, dog and calf, farm, town, and countryside. We see still lifes of old Model-T autos, his father's hammer, scythe, cap and gloves, and other such period "stuff' as the artist calls it. These are glimpses back into a boyhood of a half-century ago. They are followed by paintings of a bigger and later world seen with the same engrossing interest.
"But Milosevich is] still a down-to-earth Southwesterner committed to his own native land.... He has continued to live in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and California, his work expanding steadily his reputation as a devoted grass-roots painter."