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Sharp's Rifle Shop
Artist
Rosson Crow
(American, born 1982)
Date2009
MediumOil, acrylic and enamel on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 96 x 240 in. (243.84 x 609.6 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Director's Council and Museum purchase, 2009
Object number2009.1.A-B
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Rosson Crow
Category
Label TextRosson Crow’s personalized, darkly Romantic and imaginative history paintings conflate disparate events and places. The Texas native creates highly chromatic works speak to America’s unruly past—rodeo arenas, gun shops, saloons, trophy rooms, and butcher shops have been some of the artist’s subjects. Her large-scale paintings, some measuring sixteen feet across, are uninhabited, recalling ornate theater backdrops into which viewers can project their own imaginations.
Although Crow often bases her work on found images, her elaborately staged paintings incline to spectacle and exaggeration over truth. Sharp’s Rifle Shop, 2009, exemplifies these elements of high drama in its baroque-meets-Old West style and its incorporation of fact and fiction. Adopting a wide-angle view, the painting shows a plunging perspective into a gun shop lined with glass cases of rifles. Taxidermy trophy mounts line the walls above. The text of the shop sign is just visible in the shadowy background, while in the foreground, a large formation of rifles stands inexplicably upright, like a troop of soldiers. Much of the room is rendered in a palette of black, sepia, and white, reminiscent of a vintage photograph, but the patterned carpet—a frequent motif in Crow’s paintings—is blood red. The artist finished the canvas with energetic slings of white enamel paint that disrupt the three-dimensional illusion of the painted space and create a sense of restless disturbance.
Although Crow often bases her work on found images, her elaborately staged paintings incline to spectacle and exaggeration over truth. Sharp’s Rifle Shop, 2009, exemplifies these elements of high drama in its baroque-meets-Old West style and its incorporation of fact and fiction. Adopting a wide-angle view, the painting shows a plunging perspective into a gun shop lined with glass cases of rifles. Taxidermy trophy mounts line the walls above. The text of the shop sign is just visible in the shadowy background, while in the foreground, a large formation of rifles stands inexplicably upright, like a troop of soldiers. Much of the room is rendered in a palette of black, sepia, and white, reminiscent of a vintage photograph, but the patterned carpet—a frequent motif in Crow’s paintings—is blood red. The artist finished the canvas with energetic slings of white enamel paint that disrupt the three-dimensional illusion of the painted space and create a sense of restless disturbance.