I had Barbara Van Cleve on the podcast today and she is just incredible. Barbara spent her entire life as photographer, getting her first camera in 1946 at age 11. She has a photograph that is still being printed and published to this day that she took in 1950 when she was 15 while on a camping trip with her father. We talk about her life and how she managed to go from being a fourth generation rancher to the celebrated photographer she is today.

Her family gets to Montana in 1889, years before Montana was even a state. Her love of the ranch, of horses, of cattle, of being a true Montanan fueled her early days of photography. To many people, Montana is a very special place. She is extremely proud of that heritage and has been the recipient of many, many awards from not only Montana, but from all over the place.

Barbara and her work has been featured on CBS , CNN, and more. There's a documentary that's just finishing just on her life too. She's really important and we're very fortunate to have her in our gallery, thanks to Andrew Smith, who represented her for 40 years.

When Andrew closed his brick and mortar gallery, we were fortunate to be able to open a new door and begin representing her at Medicine Man Gallery. For me, even more importantly, is getting the opportunity to begin a friendship with this person who's a very important artist, both personally and historically.

That's what makes this podcast so much fun. I mean, those are the kind of podcasts that I just devour because it's real and she is so open and spontaneous. Real talk, if you don't like this podcast, you're probably not going to like any of my podcasts.

Anyway, we had a lovely to talk and went for about two hours. So I'm going to make this into a part one and part two. So this is part two of western photography legend Barbara Van Cleve on Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 319.

I had Barbara Van Cleve on the podcast today and she is just incredible. Barbara spent her entire life as photographer, getting her first camera in 1946 at age 11. She has a photograph that is still being printed and published to this day that she took in 1950 when she was 15 while on a camping trip with her father. We talk about her life and how she managed to go from being a fourth generation rancher to the celebrated photographer she is today.

Her family gets to Montana in 1889, years before Montana was even a state. Her love of the ranch, of horses, of cattle, of being a true Montanan fueled her early days of photography. To many people, Montana is a very special place. She is extremely proud of that heritage and has been the recipient of many, many awards from not only Montana, but from all over the place.

Barbara and her work has been featured on CBS , CNN, and more. There's a documentary that's just finishing just on her life too. She's really important and we're very fortunate to have her in our gallery, thanks to Andrew Smith, who represented her for 40 years.

When Andrew closed his brick and mortar gallery, we were fortunate to be able to open a new door and begin representing her at Medicine Man Gallery. For me, even more importantly, is getting the opportunity to begin a friendship with this person who's a very important artist, both personally and historically.

That's what makes this podcast so much fun. I mean, those are the kind of podcasts that I just devour because it's real and she is so open and spontaneous. Real talk, if you don't like this podcast, you're probably not going to like any of my podcasts.

Anyway, we had a lovely to talk and went for about two hours. So I'm going to make this into a part one and part two. So this is part one of western photography legend Barbara Van Cleve on Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 318.

I had Dennis Ziemienski on today, and I've known Dennis for a long time, represented him for about 20 years, and we're doing a retrospective for him on December 6th in Tucson. He's going to turn 77 in May, and he's been working on this for over a year. There's a new on Dennis that just came out and we're going to have over 60 paintings in the show.

It's a big deal for artists to have their lives celebrated. Dennis definitely needs to be celebrated because he's a remarkable artist. As an illustrator he did some things that were gigantic. The Super Bowl, Academy Awards, Olympics, Kentucky Derby, you name it, he did it. Then after being a successful illustrator, he transitioned into fine art and succeeds in spades.

He loves to create. Every time I talk to him, he's excited and happy to be talking about the art that he's painting and what he's doing. So for me, it's a thrill to have his retrospective at our gallery this year (again, December 6, 2024).

To see all that work together is going to be so compelling, I have no doubt. Not only will it be the fine art, but we're doing something in our new Maynard Dixon and Native American Art Museum, which will be a show of illustrations juxtaposed against Maynard Dixon's commercial art.

So we just talk about it, right? We just talk about his life and how he got into art in the first place. I really wanted to focus on the paintings in his book and the retrospective, and I think we got it. I think it's a great podcast, and it will be one of those that's noted, when people are doing research is an important one because you can see his life laid out just as you'll see it in his retrospective coming up, Dennis Ziemienski.

Purchase the new book "The Art of Dennis Ziemienski"