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Post Independent | By Ray K. Erku | Jan 18, 2023
We are pleased to share this Dan Young feature highlighting the artist’s artist process in creating his plein air paintings and his passion for painting the western Garfield County along with Colorado River. Please read a preview of the article below.
Two unbothered bald eagles perched high upon the gnarled limbs of a dead cottonwood tree. Mule deer bucks crowned by giant racks walked by without a worry. They just kept on peacefully grazing.
As far as the fauna was concerned, Dan Young was one of them.
Nearby, Young had casually swung his legs over a barbed-wire fence. He trudged through thick mud, then cleaned off his boots using a nearby patch of snow.
He pointed toward one of the bucks.
“I call that one Elvis,” he said. “Because he loves to get his picture taken.”
Young is a contemporary landscape artist who spends winters capturing via canvas and paintbrush the hazy hues of hills, buttes and plateaus in western Garfield County. His paintings have also paid homage to Mt. Sopris, fly fishing on the Frying Pan River, the Grand Hogback, the Crystal River Valley — many natural settings interspersing Western Slope backyards.
Collectors from all over the world purchase his works at the Ann Korologos Gallery, a Basalt exhibition room featuring 40 locally- and nationally-acclaimed artists. Its director, Sue Edmonds, said Young is one the gallery’s best sellers.
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“There’s not a lot of landscape painters that go out and paint like he does,” Edmonds said of Young. “I think that being out there and capturing the light in the moment is what makes his work so special.”
Edmonds said COVID-19 and its ensuing mass urban exodus drummed up business quite well for local artists and galleries. People were stuck at home, in places like Aspen, trying to adorn their new empty walls. Young was getting picked up about twice a month during this time.
“(Young) has been with the gallery for about 20-25 years maybe, and in that time his work has gotten better and better,” she said. “He’s sought after by so many collectors.”
“When I first started painting, I wanted the obvious. Give me Mt. Sopris, give me an obvious river scene, give me that beauty Colorado is known for. I don’t do that anymore. I just kind of wander around and see what strikes me. It might be a relationship with shapes, it might be relationships of values, it might be colors.”
Dan Young
