Everett Spruce

Art Brokerage: Everett Spruce American Artist: b. 1907-2002. Born in rural Arkansas, and associated with Texas regionalists, Everett Spruce (1907 - 2002) was an artist of national significance. In his time, he was awarded prizes and critical recognition from institutions far away from the hills and forests he documented in his strikingly abstract landscape compositions. Spruce wielded energetic brushstrokes and fierce bursts of color in his works, in an effort to evoke the natural world he recalled from his upbringing in the untamed and untrammeled Ozarks. Spruce and his fellow exhibitors would later be called The Dallas Nine. This band of like-minded but stylistically disparate artists included painters like Otis Dozier and William Lester. They exhibited throughout the United States during the 1930s and, by the end of the decade, had made Regionalism into a respected part of the American art mainstream. Spruce was exhibiting at galleries in New York and saw his paintings being incorporated into the collections of a number of museums and public institutions. Austin's atmosphere, coupled with its landscape of undulating hills and woodlands, provided Spruce with new sources of inspiration. A 1945 of Spruce's solo exhibition at New York's Mortimer Levitt Gallery commented favorably on Spruce's maturation as an artist. The reviewer said, in his last one-man exhibition here six years ago [Spruce] revealed himself as a man who combined strong creative perception with considerable independence of style. Spruce died in 2002. Throughout his long career, Spruce's depictions of the natural world remained the mainstay of his artistic output. His most enduring fascinations were with birds and trees. He said about the latter that "each has its own personality." This appreciation for the specifics of natural forms and living things set Spruce's works apart from those of artists with similar proclivities and interests.