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Learn about the latest Medicine Man Gallery happenings; all about our artist, see our educational videos about native American art and fine art, watch podcasts with your favorite artists and check out art and history-related links we think you'll enjoy.

Essential West Magazine

Exploring Art, Literature, History, Museums, Lifestyle, and Cultures of the West

It amazes me that four letters - W-E-S-T - have the ability to evoke an instantaneous emotional image. Simply the act of reading these four letters has caused you to form a narrative of your west.

Can the West be distilled to its essence - a simple direction or region? I believe not; it is a deeper dive of consciousness. How America sees itself and the world defines us. Diverse cultures, strong individualism, open spaces, and raw natural beauty marinated in a roughshod history have formed this region’s unique milieu.

Our online magazine’s primary focus is to feature relevant topics in art, literature, history, museums, lifestyle, and culture; lofty goals for any publication. No single magazine can be the beckon of all things western; it is a diverse, evolving paradigm that cannot be pigeonholed. As the publisher, I hope to be the buffalo that grazes the wide expanse of western sensibility and relay to you a glimpse of how I perceive our Essential West.

- Mark Sublette

Featured Article

See America Through the Homes...
See America Through the Homes and Studios of its Greatest Artists

National parks checklists are so 2020. During and after the pandemic as Americans experiencing extended cabin fever were looking for wide open, safe, outdoor spaces to stretch their legs, they descended upon our national parks in crushing volume. Crowds, noise, trash, traffic jams. Circling for parking like at a mall the week before Christmas. National parks were popular...

Native Art and Artists Through...
Native Art and Artists Through the Lens of Jerry Jacka

Jerry Jacka (1934-2017) walked a tightrope few other photographers or artists are able to, that of a white man recording the Native world. He did so sensitively, authentically, accurately, and most importantly, with the blessing of the people he photographed, for more than 50 years. Born and raised on a ranch in New River, AZ, 35 miles north of downtown Phoenix, Jacka began winning awards for his pictures as a teenager. Everything about Arizona fascinated him from the landscapes to the trading posts, and especially, the region’s Indigenous people and their artwork. His fascination began by finding pottery shards around...

Newly Expanded Maynard Dixon Museum...
Newly Expanded Maynard Dixon Museum in Tucson Celebrates Artist's 150th Birthday

Mark Sublette was first bitten by the Maynard Dixon bug in late 1995, early 1996 when a Dixon painting came into his Tucson gallery. “I just fell in love with it, and I said at that moment in time, ‘I'm always going to have Dixon in my gallery,’” Sublette remembers. He remembers the painting, too: Late Light on the Catalinas, 1943, 16 x 20. Sublette recites the details with the speed and certainty of a father recalling a child’s birthday and weight. Sublette bought the painting, then sold it, then bought it back. “The Catalina Mountains. It was just the...

T.C. Cannon, Bob Dylan, Allan...
T.C. Cannon, Bob Dylan, Allan Houser, and Henry Moore

The first week of 2025 brought me the discovery of two artistic inspirations I was previously unaware of featuring two of my favorite artists: T.C. Cannon (1946-1978; Kiowa/Caddo) and Allan Houser (1914-1994; Chiricahua Apache). Surprisingly, it was not Cannon and Houser – arguably the most influential Native American painter and, inarguably, the most prominent Native American sculptor, respectively – doing the influencing. Instead, they were the ones being influenced. Influenced by white artists from the mainstream, Bob Dylan in the case of Cannon and Henry Moore (1898-1986) in the case of Houser. Everyone knows who Bob Dylan is; Brit Henry...

Mateo Romero Taos Pueblo Series
Mateo Romero Taos Pueblo Series

For the second year in a row, I spent late December in northern New Mexico. The art, the cuisine, the people, the landscape, and the culture have become a necessary refuge from where I live in Florida. I’ve visited the state multiple times each year since 2022. I have two more trips back already planned for 2025. As an arts and travel writer with no kids and healthy parents, I’m travel constantly. Whenever anyone asks me where my favorite place is, and they ask me in Africa, Europe, and New York, I say New Mexico. Northern New Mexico specifically. I’ve...

An Argument Against the 'Pulp'...
An Argument Against the 'Pulp' West

Wherever I go, there’s David Yarrow. Santa Fe. David Yarrow. Cherry Creek, CO. David Yarrow. Even New York. David Yarrow. I first came across the contemporary photographer’s work at C. Anthony Gallery in Beaver Creek, CO looking for my favorite artist Earl Biss. The gallery represents them both. The gallerist on site was nearly levitating at the enormous – some five and six feet across – black-and-white Yarrow photographs recently received and their popularity with customers. Good commission days. The pictures were selling for several thousand dollars, well over $10,000 for the big, framed ones. Yarrow’s carefully choreographed, cinematic, narrative...

The Native Artists Dominating Museum...
The Native Artists Dominating Museum Presentations in 2024

Artnet surveyed special exhibitions currently on view at more than 200 U.S. art museums producing a list of the contemporary artists most in fashion nationwide. At institutions, anyway. The rankings do not consider galleries or the secondary market. The highly respected art world publication found nearly 3,500 names appearing in solo and group shows at big and small museums from coast to coast, with just over 300 – less than 10% –appearing more than once. The individual artists appearing multiple times was, of course, even smaller. For the numerical ranking, career retrospectives and surveys were weighted mostly highly, “followed by...

Western Cities Again Tops in...
Western Cities Again Tops in 2024 'Arts Vibrancy Index' Rankings

Southern Methodist University’s DataArts, the National Center for Arts Research, has released its annual ranking of the 40 most arts-vibrant communities in the United States. San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City again topped the “Large Communities” (population over 1,000,000) category for 2024, repeating from a year ago. Western cities also claimed top spot in the “Medium Communities” (100,000-1,000,000) category with Santa Fe, and “Small Communities” (under 100,000) with Jackson, WY/ID, also a repeat winner from 2023. Santana Family mural in San Francisco's Mission District. First published in 2015, the Arts Vibrancy Index is composed of 13 unique measures covering aspects of supply,...

Laine Justice's Extraordinary Story from...
Laine Justice's Extraordinary Story from Kidnapping to Fine Art Success

Laine Justice’s dazzling Electric Forest (2024) painting leaps at viewers like a dog reunited with its owner after a week away – all licks, and tail wags, and running in circles. Fantastically vivid colors. Pinks and blues. Trees. Water. Maybe even a little dog’s face. An abstracted version of paradise. Joyful. Difficult imagining this cheery wonderland came from the mind of an artist kidnapped out of her bed by strangers in the middle of the night as a 14-year-old, drug down stairs, forced onto an airplane, flown across the county, and enrolled into a cult. A cult she’d spend her...

Who were the 'Indian Space...
Who were the 'Indian Space Painters?'

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, New York’s Art Students League was the most important artistic training ground in the world. A who’s-who of preeminent American modernists occupied its classrooms. Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, and Mark Rothko. Helen Frankenthaler, George Bellows, Cy Twombly, Barnett Newman, and Romare Bearden. Instructors included Robert Henri, Thomas Hart Benton, and Jacob Lawrence. A partial list. Amazing. Since its founding in 1962 as a high school, Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts has been as influential to contemporary American art as the Art Students League was to American...