Len Chmiel

Len Chmiel was born and raised in a working-class-Polish-American community in Chicago in 1942, raised in California, and lives in Hotchkiss, CO. His home and studio are perched atop a mesa in a house he built himself surrounded by gardens, greenhouses, his studio, and views of mountains, plains, mesas, rivers, wildlife and trees. Chmiel is a painter, as he prefers to be called, despite being an “Artist’s artist,” proven by the many Artists’ Choice Awards – six, at this point – awarded by his peers who consider him a master of design and composition.  

For the highly respected Chmiel, each painting he creates is an expression of himself. “I used to try to control everything, but now I allow my intuition to speak,” reflects Chmiel. “I try to stretch the truth of what the actual image is. I do paintings with recognizable subjects because I’m inspired by what I see; however, that is not my only intention. My intention is to expand the boundaries of realism rather than merely painting a facsimile.” 

Chmiel starts his process on the land, where he feels he came from and will go back to. He finds places not for their grandeur or beauty, but because it has a sense of being about it. It is his emotional response that he works to put down in the moment, but back in the studio his work expands onto large-scale canvases mounted on board. “I’ll block in the shapes of the abstract composition with a thin wash of paint,” he shares of his process in a 2013 interview with Southwest Art Magazine. “I don’t like working to hard lines, which feel restrictive to me. I like the idea that an edge can be in flux, moving back and forth as I work.” From this place of flux and movement, Chmiel works the canvas and the composition, painting light, transparency and movement across a desert bluff, a foggy morning, or ice cold, “gin clear” water.  

 
The work of Len Chmiel is widely celebrated, collected, awarded and published. Select exhibitions include Masters of the American West at The Autry Museum (‘23, ‘22, ’19, ’18, 11, ‘04, ‘03, ‘02) where he received the John J. Geraghty Award (‘22) “in recognition of his advancement of contemporary Western art,” James R. Parks Purchase Award (‘02), and his sixth Artists’ Choice Award (’22, ’16, ‘11). He was selected as the Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale Featured Artist, twice received Best in Show honors, and was received Artists’ Choice Awards three times over his participation from 2018 to 1998. Prix de West has twice awarded Chmiel the Wilson Hurley Memorial Award (‘19, ‘17) and the Robert Lougheed Memorial Award (2018). The Woolaroc Museum’s The Best of the Best Retrospective Exhibit and Sale selected Chmiel in 2018 as one of eight artists showcased. In 2016, the Steamboat Springs Art Museum honored the painter with a 45-year retrospective exhibition. In 2009 he won the Best of Show Award for his cumulative body of work at the Maynard Dixon Country Invitational in Mt. Carmel, Utah. He was also exhibited in National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (’04-’96), National Academy of Western Art, National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, OK (’94-’91), Eiteljorg Invitational (’91), and more. Select public and private collections include National Museum of Wildlife Art (Jackson, WY), Governor and Mrs. Richard Lamm (CO), State of Wyoming, Colorado Springs Pioneers’ Museum (CO), Museum of New Mexico and more. Len Chmiel’s work is included in two books on oil painting, including Len Chmiel: An Authentic Nature, which depicts four decades of the landscape paintings.