Lot 38042: BEN CARLTON MEAD (American, 1902-1986) Storm over

BEN CARLTON MEAD (American, 1902-1986) Storm over Palo Duro Oil on masonite 16-1/4 x 22 inches (41.3 x 55.9 cm) Signed lower left: Ben Carlton Mead Ben Carleton Mead was born in Bay City, Texas, but spent most of his childhood in Amarillo. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1923-1926, was a staff artist for the Witte Museum in San Antonio, and taught art at Amarillo Junior College. During the Great Depression, Mead was commissioned by the WPA to do several murals throughout the Southwest, most notably in the Tucumcari County courthouse. Santa Ynez Mission has a strong narrative quality similar to Mead's Depression-era murals and portrays life in the wide-open spaces of the American Southwest. Storm over Palo Duro Canyon is a stunning landscape painting of the famous West Texas canyon, where Mead lived on a ranch during most of the 1930s. The bright, expressive colors of the landscape, a vivid interpretation of the naturally colorful canyon, contrast beautifully with the gray-blue sky. Mead has captured the beauty, mood, power, and feeling of anxiety invoked by the vision of a distant thunderstorm sweeping across West Texas.