Jerry West

Book excerpt: Jerry West: The Alchemy of Memory is the long-awaited, richly deserved retrospective of one of Santa Fe and New Mexico's most prominent artists. West was born in 1933 before the war that brought New Mexico into the modern century. His father Harold E. ("Hal") West, a WPA artist, anchored his son in the rugged world of ranch life and an abiding respect for American regionalism, with a deep affinity for family, the ease of friendships, and the loneliness of the Dust Bowl prairie. West's paintings explore the complex psychology of his dreams and the vividness of memories mixed in with his experiences and perceptions being a child of a world scarred by wars and the atomic bomb. All of this produces rich, complex, often challenging paintings of metaphor and allegory that speak powerfully to the beauty, mystery, and magnificence of the human condition that West examines in his work.