Jerry West: The Alchemy of Memory is the long-awaited, richly deserved retrospective of one of Santa Fe and New Mexico's most prominent artists. West was born in 1933 before the war that brought New Mexico into the modern century. His father Harold E. ("Hal") West, a WPA artist, anchored his son in the rugged world of ranch life and an abiding respect for American regionalism. Dreams, memory, prairie, the night sky; demons, family, history; remoteness and the grandeur of the vast windmills, coyotes and low-flying ravens; childhood, manhood, a tiny white kite and an advancing storm; vulnerability and masculinity; the strong, saturated colors of an artist who knows what he knows - a figurative artist of the subconscious nestled in peronal history with the New Mexico roots intact. Featuring ninety painting and some prints and murals that cover the period from early 1960s to the present and narrated by the artist.
