Paintings by Tom Schulte and ceramic by Suzanne Hill at Modern West Fine Art.

“We focus on the Spirit of the West,” says Shalee Cooper, gallery director and curator of Under Open Skies, a group exhibition of contemporary landscape art at Modern West Fine Art through November 6. “We really support established and emerging artists.”

Demonstrating an abundance of creativity across painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking and more, the participating artists’ mastery of technique and subject creates a rare visual joy.

No hyperbole.

Billy Schenck began creating the landscapes in the exhibition because of his inspiration from Utah. “It’s still one of his favorite places to paint,” Cooper says. “He has this stunning contemporary Pop reference representing those early serigraphs he would do—paint-by-number style. But now he blends his skies a little.”

Billy Schenck, “Utah Landscape #30,” 2025, oil on canvas, 22 x 28 in.

Tom Schulte is a new painter at the gallery, inspired by the beauty and solitude of the Western landscape. “It’s so innovative, the technique he’s using,” Cooper says. “He carves imagery into commercial rubber flooring, then burnishes, patinates and seals a layer of copper, finishing with colorful layers of oil glazes.”

Juxtaposed with ceramicist Suzanne Hill’s sinuous pottery, Schulte’s work complements hers, each balancing and lifting the other and, in turn, making both shine brighter.

Multidisciplinary artist Kevin Perry, another recent addition to the gallery roster, “is really pushing the boundaries of photography,” Cooper says. Perry draws on the history and visual culture of the American West for inspiration.

Shonto Begay is a Navajo artist whose impressionistic, rhythmic brushstrokes animate paintings of desert vistas and colorful skies. “He says they’re a chant, a prayer,” Cooper says.

Other awe-inspiring works include Alexandra Fuller’s 2026 archival pigment print on Dibond, “Hermes,” 40 x 53 inches; Ludivine Gérard’s “Monument,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 40 inches; Xi Zhang’s “The Jump Rope,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 58 x 58 inches; Kiki Gaffney’s “All the Time in the World,” 2026, graphite, acrylic, oil, pastel, colored pencil, pen, gold leaf and collage on paper; Dara Hartman’s “Dogwood,” 2025, porcelain, metal, paracord, beads and walnut, 90 x 19 x 2 inches; Laura Hope Mason’s “Lake Bed,” 2026, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches; and Tom Judd’s “Provo Canyon,” 2025, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches.

Yet, as strong as the individual works are, it is the way the exhibition is collectively hung that makes for a particularly rewarding gallery experience.

Cooper and her cohorts are to be congratulated. “It’s always challenging with a group show to really feature each artist in a way where their work stands on its own yet is cohesive when displayed together.”

In Under Open Skies, every piece, regardless of medium or size, supports and enhances the works adjacent to it. The result is a cohesive exhibition that gives individual artists room to breathe while sustaining the gallery’s broader vision of the West.

The exhibition also includes work by Shalee Cooper, Phil Epp, Nathan Florence, Woody Shepherd and Eugene Tapahe.

Paintings by Ludivine Gérard and ceramics by Suzanne Hill at Modern West Fine Art.

Under Open Skies, Modern West Fine Art, Salt Lake City, through Nov. 14.

Dave Gagon

Dave Gagon has been writing for more than 30 years, including 19 years as the visual arts writer and editor at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. During his tenure, he reviewed the work of more than 100 artists from across Utah and received multiple writing awards from the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. Gagon is the author of Honorable Release (Signature Books 1992), a young adult novel, children’s stories and picture books, and songs that he has written and recorded. He also pursues photography through his ongoing A.I.P.S. (Abstraction In Plain Sight) project.