Reimagining the West: Billy Schenck incorporates photorealist techniques with a pop art sensibility

Billy Schenck still remembers climbing up the stone rocks at Acoma Pueblo to see the sweeping views when he was 5 years old.

“I was with my folks,” the pop art-meets-the-West artist said. “I have such a distinct memory of climbing up the stone steps of Acoma. The Natives were all in white robes and blankets. It was monsoon season — the clouds out there — and you could see 30–40 miles.”

Reimagining the West: Billy Schenck incorporates photorealist techniques with a pop art sensibility

The artist-turned-rancher’s latest work, “Women of the Canyons,” is on display at Santa Fe’s Blue Rain Gallery.

Schenck’s work incorporates photorealist techniques with a pop art sensibility, both mocking and exalting images of the West. Cowboys, Native Americans and rugged landscapes predominate his palette.

Schenck is known for creating cinematic imagery reproduced in a flattened, reductivist style. Colors sit side-by-side rather than blended or shadowed. The August 2014 issue of Southwest Art magazine described his work as “a stance … a pendulum between the romantic and the irreverent.”

The title painting “Women of the Canyons” features a trio of women working in a Southwestern landscape at dusk.

“I’ve been painting women since 1976,” Schenck said. “I’ve been painting women with guns, self-confidence, independence, not needing a male presence.

“I do like doing portraits,” he added. “I like doing paintings where there is a great view.”

Acoma planted that first seed, the artist said. Schenck grew up in Ohio. Comic books provided another early inspiration, especially the characters Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

The Columbus College of Art “threw me out,” he said, so he switched to the Kansas City Art Institute.

“When I started working from photographs in 1968, the dean and the art department all told me I had to stop,” Schenck.

He quit painting, creating a handmade book instead. He moved to New York City, where his style flourished. An acquaintance at a Soho gallery showed him the work of the photorealist Chuck Close, the pop sculptures of Duane Hanson and the early pop art of Clem Clarke.

“It gave me permission,” Schenck said.

“I definitely liked the pop artists,” he added. “I worked for Andy Warhol. I crashed with Lou Reed, Nico and John Cale. I was a gofer for the light crew.

“(Andy) was really quite shy,” Schenck continued. “I was in awe of Andy. The very first art show I saw was his soup cans.”

The pop art of Roy Lichtenstein, with its dots and headlines, inspired Schenck to use captions in his paintings.

Schenck’s first New York solo show sold out in 1972. He was soon in demand in Brussels, Zurich, London, Paris and Milan, Italy.

Schenck approaches his compositions like movie stills, in part because he was on the set of the 1973 Glenn Ford movie “Santee,” which was filmed in Santa Fe. He drapes his subjects in Navajo blankets, jewelry and more.

“I love the horses, the saddles, the guns and the ropes,” he said.

The pottery in “Women of the Canyons” is his own.

“With the silhouettes, you can’t tell whether they’re ancient or contemporary.”

Humor gives him a chance to create political and social commentary. “The IRS Agents” shows a furious, fedora-hatted gunman beneath the caption “The I.R.S. agents just kept coming.”

A genuine cowboy himself, Schenck is a ranch-sorting world champion and the proprietor of the Double Standard Ranch in Santa Fe, his home for the past two decades.

Schenck’s artwork hangs in 54 museum collections, including Smithsonian Institution, Denver Art Museum, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Booth Western Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, the Mesa Southwest Museum, Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas, the Albuquerque Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Private collections include the estate of Malcolm Forbes, Laurance Rockefeller, the estates of Fritz Scholder, and Sylvester Stallone. Corporate collections include American Airlines, IBM, Sony, and Saatchi & Saatchi.