“No other nation has taken a time and place from its past and produced a construct of the imagination equal to America’s creation of the West.”

                                                                                                                                                            David Hamilton Murdoch, The American West, The Invention of a Myth

"Tales and Truths" is a project that attempts to recreate an “American West” as depicted by artists of the time, acknowledging (not condoning) the truths, myths and omissions in their work while revealing an “American persona” embodied in romanticized frontier legends.

Throughout time art has been used to influence perceptions, politics and policies. “How the West was won” has many interpretations and it is often the winner that writes history. For those documenting the American West, the prejudices of the day (including the artist’s), the desire to please editors, and the need to secure government protection/funding encouraged distortions and a blind eye or nod to the cultural dominance, land grab, loss and displacement within the frontier experience. The ensuing cult of the rugged cowboy, stereotyping “Indian” inferiority or savagery, the bravery of the U.S. Calvary, the fortitude and innocence of Christian settlers and the belief that the “end justifies the means” continues to have deep roots in the American psyche, policies and prejudices.

I am not passing judgment on what other artists’ experienced or imagined or on my recreation of frontier stories using others’ art. I was; however, surprised to learn of the lasting impact of cowboy artists, such as Frederic Remington, in perpetuating the idea of an American West as a story of optimism and good versus evil well into the late 1960’s, influencing both history and film. I was also reminded how easy it is to alter the truth or make something that is inherently brutal or destructive beautiful, interesting, acceptable or a different reality.

I too am guilty of creating fictions and appropriation by the choice of landscapes I have photographed, partial use of original artwork available and integration of multiple artists’ work in the same image. As I think about the spirits that once occupied this land, I make black and white ghost like images from artwork from vintage postcards. The composed images are then printed on archival Kitakata paper producing an effect reminiscent of the photochrom printing process popular at the time creating an illusion of images printed during a different era.

I leave it to the viewer to decide what to believe with the understanding that not all that is made visible is true or absolute; a metaphor for our media environment today. It is an opportunity to dialogue and question the representative narratives of an idealized West, American myth and their impact on the national consciousness.