blue bronc

remington precedent

archival record: figure: mounted. posture: dynamic. frontal-diagonal orientation. iconographic inventory: hat airborne. lasso raised overhead. blond mustached rider. bucking bronc. treeline. teal horizon band. cloud-broken sky.
chromatic inventory: ground field: total cyan saturation — flat, unrecessed. horse body: warm brown base carried into olive-green and magenta-pink passages on the legs. mane and tail: burnt orange. shirt: rust to burnt sienna. chaps: blue to purple-lavender — the dominant chromatic mass of the figure. glove: teal. lasso: cobalt blue. hair: gold. neckerchief: cream-yellow. hat: warm brown, separated from the figure, airborne in the upper right register. treeline: deep forest green. horizon band: teal. clouds: yellow-green and white passages. the palette assigned to american frontier imagery is absent. the field is total color. the iconography is intact.
the compositional grammar — rider unseated, hat lost, arm raised — descends directly from remington's broncho buster, 1895. the chromatic terms of that inheritance are refused.

filed under: rogue colorist. chroma cowboys. chromatic subversion. chromatic gender critique. contemporary western painting. americana. frederic remington. bronc riding. rodeo. figurative non-conformity.